Cathedral of the Sea

He reached inside a big chest and handed him a hunting knife that was much longer and broader than the bastaix dagger. Arnau drew his finger along its sharp blade. From that moment on, day after day, he joined Eiximèn’s guard to train in hand-to-hand combat with this new knife. He was also given a colored uniform, with a coat of mail, a helm—which he polished until it shone—and strong leather shoes that were tied up round his ankles. The tough training alternated with real hand-to-hand combats, without weapons, that were organized by the nobles in the camp. Arnau soon became the champion of the shield bearer’s guard, and not a day went by without him fighting once or twice in front of a noisy crowd that wagered on the winner.

It took only a few of these fights for Arnau to become famous among all the troops. Whenever he walked around the camp, in the few free moments left to him, he could sense he was being watched and talked about. How strange it felt to have people fall silent when you went by!

Eiximèn d’Esparca’s captain smiled when the soldier told him who was looking for Arnau.

“Do you think I could pay a visit to one of her girls too?” he asked.

“I’m sure you could. The old woman is crazy for your man. You can’t imagine how her eyes shine at the mention of him.”

The two of them laughed out loud.

“Where do I have to take him?”

FRANCESCA CHOSE A small tavern on the outskirts of Figueres for their meeting.

“Don’t ask questions, and do as you’re told,” the captain warned Arnau. “There’s somebody who wants to see you.”

The two soldiers led him to the tavern. When they were there, they showed him up to the wretched little room where Francesca was waiting for him. As soon as Arnau was inside, they shut the door and barred it from the outside. Arnau turned and tried to open it; when he failed, he began banging on it with his fists.

“What’s going on?” he cried. “What is this?”

All he got by way of response was the two men’s cackles.

Arnau listened to them for a few moments. What was happening? Then he suddenly realized he was not alone. He turned round again: Francesca was watching him. She was leaning against the window, her figure dimly lit by a candle on one of the walls. In spite of the gloom, he could see her bright green robe. A prostitute! How many stories about women had he heard in the warmth of the campfires? How many soldiers had boasted of spending all their pay on a girl who was always so much better, more beautiful, and more voluptuous than the one talked about before? Arnau said nothing, and looked down at the floor of the room. He was in the army because he was running away from two women! Perhaps ... perhaps this trick was because he never said anything, because he never showed any interest in women ... He had often been scoffed at for it round the campfire.

“What kind of joke is this?” he asked Francesca. “What do you want from me?”

The candlelight was so dim she still could not make him out properly, but that voice ... His voice was already that of a man, and she could see that he was big and tall, as the girl had said. She could feel her legs trembling and felt weak at the knees. Her son!

Francesca had to clear her throat several times before she could speak.

“Don’t worry. I don’t intend to do anything that could bring you dishonor. Besides,” she went on, “we are on our own. What could a weak old woman like me do to a strong young man like you?”

“So why are those two outside laughing?” asked Arnau, still standing close to the door.

“Let them laugh if they like. Men have twisted minds: they like to think the worst. Perhaps if I had told them the truth, if I had told them why I was so anxious to see you, they wouldn’t have been as keen as they were to bring you when they imagined it was for a baser reason.”

“What were they to think of a prostitute and a man shut in a room in a tavern? What else can one expect from a whore?”

Arnau spoke harshly, woundingly. It took Francesca some time to recover.

“We are people too,” she said, raising her voice. “Saint Augustine wrote that it was for God to judge fallen women.”

“So you brought me here to talk about God?”

“No.” Francesca went over to him; she had to see his face. “I brought you here to talk about your wife.”

Arnau staggered as though he had been hit. She could see he truly was handsome.

“What’s wrong? How do you ...”

“She is pregnant.”

“Maria?”

“Aledis ... ,” said Francesca without thinking. Had he said Maria?

“Aledis?”

Francesca could see he was dazed. What did that mean?

“What are you two doing talking all the time?” the soldiers shouted outside, and they banged on the door, laughing. “What’s wrong? Is he too much of a man for you?”

Arnau and Francesca looked at each other. She signaled for him to move away from the door, and Arnau followed her. They began to talk in a whisper.

“Did you say Maria?” asked Francesca when they were on the far side of the room by the window.

“Yes. My wife’s name is Maria.”

“Who is Aledis then? She told me that...”

Arnau shook his head. Was that a sad gleam in his eyes? wondered Francesca. Arnau seemed to have crumbled in front of her eyes: his arms hung loosely by his sides, and his head seemed too heavy for his neck. But he said nothing. Francesca felt a stab of pain deep inside. “What is going on, my son?” she thought.

“Who is Aledis?” she insisted.

Arnau simply shook his heavy head. He had abandoned everything: Maria, his work, the Virgin ... and now, she was here! And pregnant! Everybody would find out. How could he ever return to Barcelona, to his work or his home?

Francesca looked out of the window. The night was dark. What was the pain gripping her so tightly? She had seen men crawling through the dirt, women with nowhere to turn; she had been a witness to death and misery, to sickness and torment, but never until this moment had she felt anything like this.

“I don’t think she is telling the truth,” she said, struggling to speak as she continued to gaze out of the window. She sensed Arnau stirring behind her.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t think she is pregnant. I think she is lying.”

“What does that matter?” Arnau heard himself say.

Aledis was in the camp, and that was more than enough. She was following him, and she would pursue him everywhere. Nothing of what he had done was of any use.

“I could help you.”

“Why would you want to?”

Francesca turned to face him. They were almost side by side; she could reach out and touch him. She could smell his body. “Because you are my son!” she could tell him. Now was the moment if ever—but what had Bernat told him about her? What good would it do for him to learn his mother was a common whore? Francesca stretched out a trembling hand. Arnau did not move. What good would it do? She held back. More than twenty years had gone by, and she was nothing more than a prostitute.

“Because she lied to me,” she answered. “I gave her food and clothing. I took her in. I don’t like being lied to. You look like a good person, and I think she is lying to you too.”

Arnau looked her straight in the eye. What did it matter? Aledis was free of her husband and was far from Barcelona. Aledis would tell everything, and besides, this woman ... what was it in her that somehow made him feel at peace?

He leaned toward her and began to explain.

29

KING PEDRO THE Third had already been in Figueres for seven days when on 28 July 1343, he ordered the army to strike camp and begin the march on Roussillon.

“You’ll have to wait,” Francesca told Aledis while the girls were taking down their tent to follow the soldiers. “When the king orders them to set off, none of them can leave the ranks. Perhaps when we make camp again ...”

Aledis looked at her inquiringly.

“I’ve already sent him a message,” said Francesca in an offhand way. “Are you coming with us?”

Aledis nodded.

“Well, help out then,” Francesca told her sharply.

Twelve hundred men on horseback and more than four thousand foot soldiers, all of them armed and with provisions for eight days, set off toward La Junquera, a town little more than half a day’s march from Figueres. Behind them came a huge train of carts, mules, and all sorts of camp followers. When they reached La Junquera, King Pedro ordered them to set up camp once more: a new papal messenger, an Augustine friar this time, had brought another letter from Jaime the Third. When King Pedro had conquered Mallorca, King Jaime had turned to the pope for aid; on that occasion, monks, bishops, and even cardinals had tried unsuccessfully to mediate.

Now once more King Pedro refused to listen to the papal envoy. His army spent the night at La Junquera. Was this the moment? Francesca wondered as she watched Aledis helping the others prepare the food. No, it was not, she decided. The farther they were from Barcelona and Aledis’s former life, the more opportunity she would have. “We have to wait,” she told Aledis when she inquired anxiously about Arnau.

The next morning, King Pedro ordered everyone on the march again.

“To Panissars! In battle formation! Four columns ready for combat!”

The order ran through the ranks. Arnau heard it as he was ready to move off with the rest of Eiximèn d’Esparca’s personal guard. To Panissars! Some of the men shouted the word, others merely whispered it, but all spoke of it with pride and respect. The pass at Panissars! The way through the Pyrenees between Catalan territory and Roussillon. That night, only half a league from La Junquera, stories of the feats of arms from the legendary battle of Panissars could be heard round every campfire.

Panissars was where Catalans—the fathers or grandfathers of the current army—had defeated the French. The Catalans standing alone! Many years earlier, Pedro the Great of Catalonia had been excommunicated by the pope for conquering Sicily without his consent. The French, led by Philippe the Bold, had declared war on the heretic in the name of Christianity, and with the help of some traitors had crossed the Pyrenees by the pass at La Macana.

Pedro the Great had been forced to withdraw. The nobles and knights of Aragon had abandoned him and returned to their own lands.

“Only we Catalans were left!” said someone in the night, silencing even the crackling fire.

“And Roger de Llùria!” shouted another man.

His armies depleted, King Pedro had to allow the French to invade Catalonia while he awaited reinforcements from Sicily, under the command of Admiral Roger de Llùria. He ordered Viscount Ramon Folch de Cardona, the defender of Girona, to withstand the French siege until Roger de Llùria could reach Catalonia. Viscount Cardona mounted an epic defense of the city until at length King Pedro authorized him to surrender.

Roger de Llùria arrived and defeated the French navy. On land, the French army was swept by an epidemic.

“When they took Girona, they desecrated the shrine of Sant Narcis,” one of the soldiers at a campfire explained.

According to local legend, millions of flies had come buzzing out of the sepulchre when the French defiled it. It was these insects that spread the epidemic through the French camp. Defeated at sea, weakened by sickness on land, King Philippe the Bold called a truce in order to allow him to retreat without a massacre.

Pedro the Great granted him the truce, but only in his name and that of his nobles and knights.

Now ARNAU COULD hear the cries of the Almogavar company as they entered the pass at Panissars. Shielding his eyes, he looked up at the steep mountainsides off which the mercenaries’ bloodcurdling shouts echoed. It had been here, alongside Roger de Llùria and watched from on high by Pedro the Great and his nobles, that the Almogavars had slaughtered the retreating French army, killing thousands of men. The next day Philippe the Bold died in Perpignan, and the crusade against Catalonia was over.

The Almogavars kept up their shouting all the way through the pass, challenging an enemy that failed to appear. Perhaps they too remembered what their fathers and grandfathers had told them had happened on this very spot fifty years earlier.

Those ragged men, who when they were not fighting as mercenaries lived in the forests and mountains and spent their time plundering and laying waste to the lands ruled by the Moors, ignoring whatever treaty the Christian kings might have made, took orders from no one. Arnau had seen it during the march from Figueres to La Junquera, and it was obvious again now: of the four columns into which the king had divided the army, three advanced in formation beneath their banners, but the Almogavars swarmed in an unruly mass, shouting, threatening, laughing at their enemy, daring them to come and show themselves.

“Don’t they have any leaders?” asked Arnau when he saw how the Almogavars ignored Eiximèn d’Esparca’s call for a halt and instead went on with their disorderly advance through the pass.

“It doesn’t look like it, does it?” said a veteran who had come to a halt beside him, as all the royal shield bearer’s personal guard had done.

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Well, they do have their leaders, and they are careful not to disobey them. They’re not commanders like ours, though.” The veteran pointed to Eiximèn d’Esparca, then caught an imaginary fly in his fingers and waved it in front of Arnau’s eyes. The bastaix and several other soldiers laughed at his gesture. “They have real leaders,” the veteran said, falling serious all of a sudden. “In their company, it doesn’t matter whose son you are, if you have a name, or are some count or other’s favorite. The most important of their leaders are the adalils.” Arnau looked at the Almogavars, who were still swarming past them. “No, don’t bother,” the soldier said. “You won’t be able to pick them out. They all dress the same, but all the Almogavars know who they are. You need four things to become an adalil: skill at leading troops; to give your all and to inspire your men to do the same; to have the qualities of a born leader; and above all, to be loyal—”

“That’s what they say our commander has,” Arnau interrupted him, pointing to the royal shield bearer.

“Yes, but nobody has ever challenged his position. To get to be an Almogavar adalil you need to have twelve other adalils swear on pain of death that you possess all these qualities. There would be no nobles left in the world if they had to do the same in front of their peers—especially when it came to loyalty.”

The soldiers listening to him all nodded their agreement. Arnau looked at the Almogavars once more. How could they bring down a charging warhorse with nothing more than a spear?

“Below the adalils,” the veteran went on, “come the almogatens. They have to be expert in battle, to give everything for their cause, to be mobile and loyal. They are chosen in the same way: twelve almogatens have to swear that the candidate possesses all the required qualities.”

“On pain of death?”

“On pain of death,” the veteran confirmed.

What Arnau could not have imagined was that these mercenaries’ independent spirit was so great that they would disobey even the king’s orders. Pedro the Third had ordered that once all his army had successfully crossed the Panissars pass, they should head directly for Perpignan, the capital of Roussillon. Despite this, as soon as they had emerged from the pass, the Almogavars split off from the main army and headed for Bellaguarda castle, which guarded its northern entrance.

Arnau and the royal shield bearer’s guard stood and watched as the mercenaries rushed up the slope to the castle. They were still whooping and shouting as they had done all the way through the pass. Eiximèn d’Esparca turned toward the king, who was also observing the attack.

But Pedro the Third did nothing. How could he stop them? He turned back and continued on his way to Perpignan. This was Eiximèn d‘Esparca’s signal. The king had sanctioned the assault on Bellaguarda, but he was the one paying the Almogavars, and if there was any booty to be shared, he wanted to be there. And so, while the main force followed the king in battle formation, Eiximèn d’Esparca and his men set off after the Almogavars.

The Catalans laid siege to the castle. That afternoon and through all the next night, the mercenaries took turns chopping down trees to make their siege weapons: assault ladders and a big battering ram mounted on wheels that was swung using ropes suspended from another, higher tree trunk, and was covered with hides to protect the men underneath.

Arnau stood guard below the walls of Bellaguarda. How were they going to storm the castle? They would be advancing unprotected, uphill, while the defenders could fire down on them from behind their battlements. He could see them up there, peeping out and observing the besiegers. On one occasion he even thought someone was staring straight at him. The defenders seemed calm, though his own legs shook at the idea of their watching him.

“They seem very sure of themselves,” he remarked to one of the veterans standing guard beside him.

“Don’t be fooled,” the man said. “Inside the castle they’re having a far worse time than us. Besides, they’ve seen the Almogavars.”

The Almogavars. There they were again. Arnau turned to look at them. They were working tirelessly and now seemed to be perfectly well organized. None of them was laughing or arguing; they were all getting on with the task in hand.

“How can they possibly frighten the people inside the castle so much?” asked Arnau.

The veteran laughed. “You’ve never seen them fight, have you?” Arnau shook his head. “Just wait and see.”

Arnau waited, dozing on the hard ground through a long night during which the mercenaries kept on building their machines by torchlight.

As day dawned and the sun rose over the horizon, Eiximèn d’Esparca ordered his troops to deploy round the castle. The shadows of the night had barely dispersed in the first timid light of day. Arnau looked round to see where the Almogavars were. This time they had obeyed the order, and were drawn up beneath the walls of Bellaguarda. Arnau peered up at the lofty castle. All the lights inside had been extinguished, but he knew they were waiting inside the walls. He shivered. What was he doing there? The morning air was chill, but his hands were sweaty on the crossbow. There was complete silence. He could die. The day before, he had often seen the defenders staring straight at him, a mere bastaix: the faces of those men, which then had been blurred in the distance, now appeared clearly before him. They were there, waiting for him! He shivered again. His knees were knocking, and he had to make a great effort to stop his teeth from chattering. He clasped his crossbow firmly to his chest so that nobody could see how his hands were shaking. The captain had told him that when the order to advance was given, he should run toward the castle, seek cover behind some boulders, and fire his crossbow up at the defenders. The problem would be to reach those boulders. Could he do it? Arnau found himself staring at them. He had to run there, hide behind them, fire his bow, duck down again, fire a second time ...

A command rent the air.

The order to attack! The boulders! Arnau got ready to sprint toward them, but felt the captain’s gloved hand holding him back.

“Not yet,” said the officer.

“But ...”

“Not yet,” the captain repeated. “Look.”

He pointed toward the Almogavars.

From among their ranks, another cry went up: “Awake, iron!”

Arnau could not take his eyes off them. Suddenly, all of them took up the cry: “Awake, iron!”

At this, all the Almogavars beat their spears and knives together until the sound drowned out their voices.

“Awake, iron!”

Their steel weapons did start to awaken, sending out showers of sparks as the blades clashed against one another or on rocks. The thunderous noise deafened Arnau. Bit by bit, hundreds and then thousands of sparks flashed in the dark, and the mercenaries were soon surrounded by a halo of bright light.

Arnau found himself waving his crossbow in the air and shouting with them: “Awake, iron!” He was no longer sweating or trembling. “Awake, iron!”

He glanced up at the castle walls: it seemed as if the Almogavars’ battle cry would bring them tumbling down. The ground was shaking, and the bright glow from the sparks grew and grew. All of a sudden, there was the sound of a trumpet, and the shouting changed into a mighty roar: “Sant Jordi! Sant Jordi!”

“Now you can go,” shouted the captain, pushing Arnau forward in the wake of about two hundred men who were charging ferociously up the castle mound.

Arnau ran to seek cover behind the boulders alongside the captain and a company of crossbow men. He concentrated on one of the scaling ladders the Almogavars had placed against the wall, trying to aim at the figures who were fighting off the mercenaries from the top of the battlements. The Almogavars were still shrieking like madmen. Arnau’s aim was true: he twice saw his bolts strike defenders below their chain-mail protection, and the bodies fall back.

As one group of attackers managed to scale the castle walls, Arnau felt the captain’s hand on his shoulder, telling him to stop firing. There was no need to use the battering ram: as soon as the Almogavars had appeared on the battlements, the castle gates opened and several knights galloped out to avoid being taken hostage. Two of them fell to the Catalan crossbow fire; the others succeeded in escaping. Deserted by their leaders, some of the castle defenders started to surrender. Eiximèn d’Esparca and his cavalry forced their way into the castle and laid about them, killing anyone who resisted. The foot soldiers poured in after them.

After he had rushed inside the castle, Arnau came to a halt, crossbow over his shoulder, dagger in hand. It was not needed. The castle yard was strewn with the dead, and those still alive were on their knees, unarmed, begging for mercy from the knights who strode around, broadswords at the ready. The Almogavars were already plundering the castle’s riches: some had entered the castle keep; others were stripping the bodies with a greed that Arnau could not bear to watch. One of them came up and offered him a handful of crossbow bolts. Some of them had missed their aim, but others were stained with blood, and a few still had lumps of flesh caught on them. Arnau hesitated. The Almogavar, an older man who was as tough and wiry as the bolts he was holding out, was surprised at Arnau’s reaction. Then he smiled a toothless smile and offered them to another soldier.

“What are you doing?” the soldier asked Arnau. “Do you think Eiximèn is going to replace your bolts for you? Clean these off,” he said, throwing them at Arnau’s feet.

In a few hours it was all over. The surviving men were shepherded together and manacled. That same night they would be sold as slaves in the camp that followed the Catalan army. Eiximèn d’Esparca’s men set off again to regain the main army. They took their wounded with them, leaving behind seventeen Catalan dead and a blazing fortress that would no longer be of any use to King Jaime the Third and his allies.

30

EIXIMÈN D’ESPARCA AND his men caught up with the royal army near the town of Elna the Proud, barely two leagues from Perpignan. The king decided to make camp there for the night. He received the visit of yet another bishop, who once again tried unsuccessfully to mediate on behalf of Jaime of Mallorca.

Although King Pedro had not objected to Eiximèn d’Esparca and his Almogavars taking Bellaguarda castle, he did try to prevent another group of knights from overrunning the tower of Nidoleres on the way to Elna. He arrived too late: by the time he got there, the knights had already taken it, killed all its inhabitants, and set fire to everything.

Nobody, however, dared go near Elna or threaten the people living there. The entire royal army gathered round their campfires and stared at the lights of the town. In open defiance of the Catalan army, its gates were left wide open.

“Why ... ,” Arnau started to ask, seated at one of the fires.

“Why is it called Elna the Proud?” one of the veterans interrupted him.

“Yes ... and why are we showing it so much respect? Why don’t they even bother to shut the gates?”

The soldier stared at the city for a while long before answering.

“Elna the Proud weighs on our consciences ... as Catalans,” he explained. “They know we won’t dare touch them.” With that, he fell silent. Arnau had learned to respect the experienced soldiers’ ways. He knew that if he hurried him, the man would look down on him and refuse to say anything more. All the veterans liked to take their time telling their stories and reminiscences, whether they were true or false, had actually happened or not. And they liked to build up the suspense. In his own good time, the soldier continued his explanation: “In the war against the French, when Elna was our possession, Pedro the Great promised to defend it. He sent a detachment of Catalan knights to do so. But they betrayed the town, fleeing at night and leaving it at the enemy’s mercy.” The veteran spat into the fire. “The French profaned the churches, killed the children by beating their heads against the walls, raped the women, and executed all the men ... all except one. That’s why the massacre at Elna is on our consciences. No Catalan would dare touch the town.”

Arnau looked again at the open gates of Elna the Proud. Then, as he gazed at the campfires of the Catalan forces, he could see that men round each of them were also staring down at Elna in silence.

“Whose life did they spare?” he asked, breaking his own rules about not being impatient.

The veteran studied him through the flames.

“A man called Bastard de Rosselló.” This time, Arnau waited for him to go on. “Years later, that same man guided the French troops through the La Macana pass to invade Catalonia.”

THE ARMY SLEPT in the shadow of the town of Elna.

A short way from them, the camp of hundreds of followers also slept. Francesca gazed at Aledis. Was this the right place? Elna’s history had been told in this camp too, and an unusual silence reigned. Francesca had found herself looking time and again at the town’s open gates. Yes, they were in inhospitable territory; no Catalan would ever be well received in Elna or the surrounding area. Aledis was a long way from home. All it needed was for her to feel she was completely alone.

“Your Arnau is dead,” Francesca told her straightaway after she had sent for her.

Aledis crumpled before her eyes: Francesca could see her visibly shrink inside her green robe. Aledis raised her hands to her face, and the strange silence was broken by the sound of her sobbing.

“How ... how did it happen?” she asked after a while.

“You lied to me,” was all Francesca said coldly.

Shaking and with eyes brimming with tears, Aledis gazed at the older woman and then looked down.

“You lied to me,” Francesca repeated. Aledis said nothing. “You want to know how it happened? Your husband—the real one—the tanner, killed him.”

Pau? That was impossible. Aledis looked up. It was impossible that an old man like him ...

“He turned up at the royal camp and accused Arnau of abducting you,” Francesca went on, disturbing Aledis’s thoughts. She wanted to observe her reactions, especially as Arnau had told her she was afraid of her husband. “He denied it, and your husband challenged him.” Aledis tried to interrupt—how could Pau challenge anyone? “He paid a captain to fight on his behalf,” Francesca insisted, forcing Aledis to remain quiet. “Didn’t you know? When someone is too old to fight, he can pay somebody else to do it for him. Your Arnau died defending your honor.”

Aledis grew desperate. Francesca could see her whole body quake. Her legs gradually gave way, and she sank to her knees on the ground in front of the older woman. Francesca was ruthless.

“I’ve heard that your husband is looking for you.”

Aledis covered her face with her hands again.

“You’ll have to leave us. Antonia will give you your old clothes back.”

That was what she had been after: the look of fear and panic on Aledis’s face!

A host of questions flooded Aledis’s mind. What could she do? Where could she go? Barcelona was at the far end of the earth, and besides, what did she have left there? Arnau was dead! The journey from Barcelona to Figueres flashed through her mind, and she felt all the horror, humiliation, and shame in her every bone. And now Pau was looking for her!

“No ... ,” Aledis stammered out, “I couldn’t do that!”

“I don’t need other people’s problems,” Francesca told her.

“Protect me!” Aledis begged her. “I’ve nowhere to go. I have no one to turn to.”

She was sobbing out loud, still on her knees in front of Francesca. She did not dare look up.

“I can’t. You’re pregnant.”

“That was a lie too,” wailed the girl.

She crawled over to Francesca’s legs. Francesca did not move.

“What would you do in return?”

“Whatever you wish!” Aledis cried. Francesca hid her smile. That was the promise she had been waiting for. How often had she wrung a similar one out of girls like Aledis? “Whatever you wish,” Aledis said again. “Protect me, hide me from my husband, and I’ll do whatever you wish.”

“You know what we are,” the other woman insisted.

What did that matter? Arnau was dead. She had nothing. She had no one left ... apart from a husband who would stone her if he found her.

“Please, I beg you, hide me. I’ll do whatever you want!”

FRANCESCA ORDERED ALEDIS not to go with any of the soldiers; Arnau was well-known in the royal army.

“You’re to work in secret,” she told her the next day, as they prepared to move on. “I wouldn’t want your husband ...” Aledis agreed before she had even finished. “You mustn’t let yourself be seen until the war is over.” Aledis nodded again.

That same night, Francesca sent Arnau a message: “It’s all arranged. She won’t bother you anymore.”

THE NEXT DAY, instead of heading for Perpignan, where King Jaime of Mallorca was installed, Pedro the Third decided to lead his army toward the coast and the town of Canet. Here, Ramon, the local viscount, was honor bound to hand over his castle because of the vassalage he had sworn after the conquest of Mallorca, when the Catalan king had allowed him to go free when he had taken Bellver castle.

So it turned out. Viscount Canet handed over his castle to King Pedro, and the army was able to rest and eat well thanks to the generosity of the local peasantry, who were counting on the fact that the royal army would soon move on to Perpignan. At the same time, King Pedro linked up with his navy.

While he was at Canet, he received yet another mediator. This time it was no less a figure than a cardinal, the second one who had interceded on Jaime of Mallorca’s behalf. King Pedro dismissed this emissary as well, and set about studying the best way to lay siege to the city of Perpignan. While the king waited for more supplies from the sea, the six days that the army was camped at Canet saw them attacking the castles and fortresses that lay between the coast and Perpignan.

In the name of the king, the Manresa host took the castle of Santa Maria de la Mar. Other companies assaulted the castle at Castellarnau Sobirà, and Eiximèn d’Esparca, with his Almogavars and other knights, besieged and finally took Castell- Rosselló.

Castell-Rosselló was not a simple frontier post like Bellaguarda. It was one of the forward defenses of the Roussillon capital. Outside its walls the same war cries of the Almogavars were heard, and the same crash of their spears and daggers. This time they were reinforced by the bloodcurdling shouts of several hundred more soldiers, all of them anxious for combat. The fortress proved much harder to overrun than Bellaguarda: the fight for the walls was bitter, and several battering rams had to be swung into action to force a way through.

The crossbowmen were the last to rush in through the gaps in the defenses. This was nothing like the victory at Bellaguarda. Soldiers and civilians, including women and children, were ready to defend the castle with their lives. Arnau was soon involved in vicious hand-to-hand fighting.

He dropped his crossbow and drew his knife. All around him, hundreds of men were locked in combat. The whistle of a sword blade jolted him back to his own situation. He jumped aside instinctively, and the sword skimmed past him. With his free hand, Arnau grabbed the wrist holding the weapon and lunged with his dagger. He did this mechanically, as he had been taught during the endless lessons Eiximèn d’Esparca’s captain had given him. He had been taught to fight; he had been shown how to kill; and yet nobody had shown him how to thrust a knife into another man’s abdomen. His adversary’s chain mail deflected the blade, and although still held by the arm, the man succeeded in whirling his sword and wounding Arnau in the shoulder.

It was only a second, but it was long enough for Arnau to realize he had to dispatch the man as quickly as possible. He gripped his dagger even more firmly and jabbed it under the chain mail, into his enemy’s stomach. The defender was still brandishing his sword, but with less strength now. Arnau thrust the dagger upward. He could feel the warmth of the man’s insides on his hand. He lifted him off the ground; the sword fell from his grasp. Arnau found himself staring face-to-face at the soldier. The man’s lips were moving, only a few inches from his own face. Was he trying to tell him something ? Over the din of battle, Arnau could hear his death rattle. What was he thinking? Could he see death coming? As if his bulging eyes had sent him a warning, Arnau wheeled round just as another defender was about to leap on him.

He did not hesitate. Arnau’s dagger sliced the air, then through his new adversary’s throat. Arnau stopped thinking. It was he who looked for more death. He fought; he shouted at the top of his lungs. He thrust and sank his blade into the flesh of his enemies not once but many times, without paying any attention to their faces or their pain.

He killed.

When it was all over and the defenders of Castell- Rosselló had surrendered, Arnau looked down at himself. He was spattered with blood, and his whole body was trembling from his exertions.

He looked round him: the heaps of bodies reminded him of the battle. He had not had the time to see any of his adversaries as people. He had not shared their pain or taken pity on their souls. Now, though, the faces he had not seen through their veil of blood came back to haunt him, claiming respect for the vanquished. Arnau would often remember the blurred features of all those he had killed.

IN MID-AUGUST, THE royal army made camp once more between Canet castle and the coast. Arnau had stormed Castell-Rosselló on the fourth of August. Two days later, King Pedro ordered his troops to strike camp, and since the city of Perpignan refused to pay homage to him, the Catalan armies laid waste to the surrounding area: Basoles, Vernet, Soles, San Esteve ... They uprooted vines, olive groves, and all other trees in their way. The only ones they did not touch were fig trees: was this merely a whim on the part of King Pedro? They burned mills and crops, destroyed farmland and villages, but never once laid siege to the capital, Perpignan, where King Jaime had sought refuge.

15 August 1343

Solemn campaign mass

DRAWN UP ON the beach, the entire royal army paid homage to the Virgin of the Sea. Pedro the Third had yielded to the pressure from the Holy Father and agreed to call a truce with Jaime of Mallorca. The news ran through the ranks like wildfire. Like most of the others, Arnau could not concentrate on what the priest was saying in the mass: they all stood sad and contrite. This time, the Virgin was no consolation to Arnau. He had killed. He had chopped down trees. He had destroyed vines and crops before the terrified gaze of peasants and their children. He had helped raze entire villages, the homes of honest people. King Jaime had secured his truce; King Pedro had given way. Arnau remembered the priests haranguing them in Santa Maria de la Mar: “Catalonia needs you! King Pedro needs you! Go to war!” What war? There had only been killing. Skirmishes in the countryside when the ones to suffer had been ordinary people and loyal soldiers ... and children, who would go hungry the next winter when the supplies of grain ran out. What war? The one that bishops and cardinals had fought, acting as go-betweens for sly, scheming kings? The priest went on with his homily, but Arnau was not listening. Why had he been made to kill? What use were all those dead?

The mass ended. The soldiers split into small groups.

“What about the booty we were promised?”

“Perpignan is rich, very rich,” Arnau heard someone say.

“How is the king going to pay his soldiers now, when he did not have enough before?”

Arnau strolled among the different groups. What did he care about booty? What was important to him was the way the children had looked at him, like the one who, clutching his sister’s hand, had watched fearfully as Arnau and other soldiers trampled their vegetables and scattered the grain that was meant to feed them that winter. “Why?” his innocent eyes seemed to implore. “What harm have we done you?” The children had probably been left in charge of the vegetable patch: they stood rooted to the spot, tears rolling down their cheeks, until the great Catalan army had finished destroying their meager possessions. As they left, Arnau did not have the heart to cast them a backward glance.

The army was going home. The columns of soldiers filtered along the roads of Catalonia, still followed by all the hangers-on, prostitutes, and traders who had also seen their dreams of riches dashed.

BARCELONA DREW NEARER. The different hosts dispersed to return to the towns they had come from. Others were to cross the city. Arnau noticed that, like his companions, he had a new spring in his step. Some of the soldiers were smiling openly: they were going home. Maria’s face flashed into his mind. “All arranged,” he had been told. “Aledis will not trouble you anymore.” That was all he wanted, that was what had driven him to war.

Maria’s face smiled at him.

31

The end of March 1348

Barcelona

DAY WAS DAWNING. Arnau and the other bastaixos were waiting AY the water’s edge to unload a Mallorcan galley that had arrived during the night. The guild aldermen were organizing their men. The sea was calm, with the waves gently lapping the shore, calling the inhabitants of Barcelona to start their day. The sun’s rays were beginning to pick out colors on the rippling waters, and while the bastaixos waited for the boatmen to arrive with the ship’s cargo, they allowed themselves to be carried away by the magic of the moment, gazing at the distant horizon or mentally following the dancing waves.

“That’s odd,” said one of them. “They’re not unloading the ship.”

They all stared out at the galley. The boatmen had drawn alongside, but some of them were already heading back to the shore with empty vessels. Others were shouting to the sailors on board, some of whom dived into the sea and clambered aboard their craft. But no one was unloading any of the merchandise from the galley.

“The plague!” the first boatmen’s cries could be heard on the beach long before they landed. “The plague has reached Mallorca!”

Arnau shuddered. How could such a beautiful sea be bringing such dreadful news? If it had been a gray, stormy day ... but everything about this morning had seemed bathed in magic. For months there had been talk of the plague in Barcelona: it was ravaging the Orient and now was spreading west; whole communities had been wiped out.

“Perhaps it won’t reach Barcelona,” some said. “To do that, it would have to cross all the Mediterranean.”

“The sea will protect us,” said others.

For several months, everyone had wanted to believe that the plague would not reach Barcelona.

Mallorca, thought Arnau. The plague had reached Mallorca: it had crossed league upon league of the Mediterranean.

“The plague!” the boatmen repeated when they reached the shore.

The bastaixos crowded round them to hear the news. The galley captain was in one of the boats.

“Take me to the magistrate and the city councillors,” he said, leaping ashore. “Quick about it!”

The aldermen did as he asked; the other bastaixos pressed round to hear what the newcomers had to say. “Hundreds are dying,” they were told. “It’s terrible. No one can do anything. Children, women, men, rich and poor, nobles and common people ... even animals are victims. The bodies are piling up in the streets and rotting. The authorities are at their wits’ end. People die within two days, howling with pain.” Some of the bastaixos ran off toward the city, shouting and waving their arms in the air. Arnau stayed to listen, horrified by what he heard. They said that those who caught the plague developed huge purulent ganglions on their necks, armpits, or groins, which grew until they burst.

The news spread quickly through the city. Many people ran down to the beach to hear it from the new arrivals, then swiftly ran back to their homes.

The whole of Barcelona became a hive of rumors: “When the ganglions burst, a host of devils come pouring out. The plague sufferers go mad and start biting others; that’s how the illness is spread. The eyes and genitals burst. If anyone looks at the ganglions, they catch it too. The victims have to be burned before they die; otherwise the disease attacks someone else. I’ve seen the plague!” Anyone who claimed this immediately became the center of attention: a crowd would gather round to hear that person’s story; after that, imagination magnified the horror as the details were repeated from mouth to mouth. The only precaution the city authorities could think of was to recommend strict measures of hygiene. In consequence, the inhabitants crowded into the public baths... and the churches. Masses, prayers, processions—nothing was enough to ward off the evil creeping ever nearer to the city. After a fearful month’s wait, the plague reached Barcelona.

The first case was a caulker who worked in the royal shipyard. When the doctors came to see him, all they could do was confirm what they had read in books and medical treatises.

“They’re the size of small tangerines,” said one, pointing to the large swellings on the man’s neck.

“They’re black, hard, and hot to the touch,” added a second doctor.

“Cold cloths for his fever.”

“We have to bleed him. If we do, the bleeding around the ganglions will disappear.”

“We have to lance the ganglions,” a third one opined.

The other doctors looked at the sick man and then at their colleague.

“According to our books, lancing is of no use.”

“After all,” said another one, “he’s only a caulker. Let’s look at his armpits and groin.”

There were big, hard, ganglions there too. Shrieking with pain, the plague victim was bled, and what little life he had left seeped out through the cuts the medical experts made in his suffering body.

That very same day, more cases were discovered. The next day, more still, and even more the day after that. The inhabitants of the city shut themselves in their houses, where some of them died amid terrible suffering. Others were left out on the streets for fear of contagion, and met slow, agonizing deaths. The authorities ordered a whitewash cross to be daubed on the door of every house where an outbreak had occurred. They continued to insist on hygiene, and for people to avoid all contact with the plague sufferers. They had the bodies burned in huge funeral pyres. Many of the inhabitants scrubbed at their skin until it came away in clumps, and wherever they could, they stayed away from the victims. But nobody thought of getting rid of the millions of fleas in the city, and to the astonishment of doctors and authorities, the disease continued to spread.

Several weeks went by, and like many others Arnau and Maria went every day to Santa Maria, offering prayers that received no response from the heavens. All around them, close friends, such as Father Albert, were dying. The plague also took the old couple Pere and Mariona, who were not able to resist the disease for long. The bishop organized a pilgrimage that would go round the entire city; it was to leave the cathedral and head down Calle de la Mar to Santa Maria. There the Virgin of the Sea would be waiting on her dais, and she would become part of the procession.

The Virgin was in Plaza de Santa Maria, with the bastaixos, who were to carry her on their shoulders. The men looked sadly at one another, silently wondering about all those who were no longer among them. Nobody said a word. They all clenched their teeth and stared at the ground. Arnau remembered earlier processions, when there had been so many of them they had to fight to get near the dais. The aldermen had to organize them so that everybody could have a turn carrying the statue, whereas now ... there were not enough bastaixos even to be replaced. How many had died? How long would this go on? The sound of people murmuring their prayers came down Calle de la Mar. Arnau looked at the head of the procession: everyone was shuffling along despondently. Where were all the nobles who were usually so proud to walk alongside the bishop? Four of the city’s five councillors had died; three-quarters of the Council of a Hundred had met the same fate. The others had fled the city. The bastaixos lifted their Virgin in silence, balanced the dais on their shoulders, let the bishop go past, and then joined the procession and the prayers. The pilgrims went from Santa Maria down to the Santa Clara convent via Plaza del Born. At Santa Clara, despite the incense the priests were burning, the smell of burned flesh was all too obvious; many of those present burst into tears. At San Daniel gate they turned left and headed toward the Nou gateway and the Sant Pere de les Puelles monastery; as they advanced they had to avoid several dead bodies and tried not to look at the dying who lay on every street corner and in front of doors daubed with a white cross that would never again open for them. “Holy Mother,” thought Arnau, carrying the statue on his shoulder, “what have we done to deserve this?” From Sant Pere the pilgrims carried on down to the Santa Anna gateway, where they turned left again in the direction of the sea, until they reached the Forn dels Arcs neighborhood, and headed back toward the cathedral.

Despite this public display of faith, many people were beginning to doubt whether the Church or the city authorities were doing anything useful: they prayed and prayed, but the plague continued to cause havoc everywhere.

“They say it’s the end of the world,” Arnau complained one day when he returned home. “All Barcelona has gone mad. They call themselves the flagellants.” Maria had her back to him. Arnau sat down, waiting for his wife to take his footwear off as usual. He went on: “There are hundreds of them out in the streets, naked from the waist up. They shout that the day of judgment is at hand, confess all their sins openly to anyone who cares to listen, and lash their backs with whips. Some of them are cut to ribbons, but they go on ...” Arnau stroked Maria’s forehead as she kneeled before him. She was burning up. “What... ?”

He lifted her chin in his hand. No, it could not be! Not her! Maria looked at him, glassy-eyed. She was sweating, and her whole face was swollen. Arnau tried to lift her head further in order to see her neck, but she winced with pain.

“Not you!” he wailed.

On her knees, Maria gripped his sandals and stared up at him. Tears began to course down her cheeks.

“My God, not you!” Arnau knelt beside her.

“Get away, Arnau,” Maria stuttered. “Don’t stay close to me.”

Arnau tried to put his arms round her, but as he did so, she whimpered with pain once more.

“Come here,” he said, helping her up as gently as he could. Sobbing, Maria continued to insist that he leave her. “How could I? You’re all that I have ... everything! What would I do without you? Some people recover from it, Maria. You will, you’ll see. You’ll get better.” Trying to comfort her, he led her to the bedroom and laid her on the bed. There he could get a clear sight of her neck: the beautiful outline was tinged with black. “A doctor ! We need a doctor!” he shouted, flinging open the window and going out onto the balcony.

Nobody seemed to hear him. Yet that night, when the ganglions started to swell on Maria’s neck, someone came to paint a white cross on their door.

All Arnau could do was press cold cloths on his wife’s brow. She was shivering uncontrollably in bed. Every time she moved, she was in such pain she could not help moaning in a way that made the hairs on Arnau’s arms stand on end. She was staring blankly up at the ceiling, but Arnau could see the lumps on her neck growing, and turning ever darker. “I love you, Maria. How often would I have liked to tell you so.” He took her hand and knelt by the bed. He spent the whole night on his knees, clutching her hand and shivering and sweating along with her, imploring the skies for help each time Maria writhed in pain.

HE USED THE best sheet they had as a shroud to wrap her in, then waited for the cart for the dead to pass by. He was not going to leave her out in the street. He wanted to hand her body over himself. And that was what he did. When he heard the weary clop of horses’ hooves outside his house, he picked Maria up and went out into the street.

“Farewell,” he said, kissing her on her forehead.

The two officials, who were wearing gloves and had thick scarves to protect their faces, were taken aback when they saw Arnau unwrap the shroud and kiss his wife. Nobody wanted to go near the plague victims, not even their loved ones, who usually left them out in the street or at most called the officials in to take them from their deathbeds. When Arnau handed them Maria’s body, they were so astonished that they laid her gently on top of the dozen or so bodies already in their cart.

With tears in his eyes, Arnau watched as the cart disappeared in the streets of Barcelona. He would be next: he went back into his house and sat to wait for the death that would reunite him with Maria. For three days, Arnau awaited the plague, constantly feeling his neck for a swelling that refused to appear. There were no ganglions, and so Arnau finally had to accept that, for the moment, the Lord was not calling him to his side to be with Maria.

Arnau walked along the beach, oblivious to the waves lapping the shore of the cursed city. He wandered through the streets of Barcelona, oblivious to the misery, the dying, and the cries from house windows. Something took him once more to Santa Maria. Building work had been suspended, and the scaffolding was empty. Blocks of stone lay all around, waiting for the masons, and yet ordinary people still flocked to the church. Arnau went in. The faithful were clustered around the unfinished high altar, standing or kneeling to pray. Although the church still did not have walls around the main apses, the atmosphere was filled with the perfume of incense that was burned to conceal the smell of death that penetrated everywhere. As Arnau was heading for the Virgin statue, he heard a priest talking to the congregation.

“You should know,” he told them, “that our supreme pontiff, Pope Clement the Sixth, has published a bull in which he absolves the Jews of all blame for causing the plague. The disease is a trial sent by God to test his Christian people.” There were murmurs of disapproval from the flock. “Pray,” the priest said, “and commend yourselves to the Lord ...”

As they left the church, many of the worshippers were arguing about what the priest had said.

Arnau paid no attention to the homily, but walked on to the Jesus chapel. The Jews? What could that possibly have to do with the plague? As ever, his little Virgin was waiting for him in the same place. As usual, the bastaixos candles kept her company. Who could have lit them? This time, though, because of the thick clouds of incense, Arnau could not see his holy mother’s face: he did not see her smile. He tried to pray but found it impossible. “Why did you allow her to die?” The tears rolled down his cheeks again as he remembered Maria and all her suffering, her body racked with pain, the dreadful ganglions that had devoured her. If it had been a punishment, he should have been the one to suffer: he was the one who had sinned by being unfaithful with Aledis.

Standing there in front of his Virgin, he sore a solemn oath that never again would he allow himself to be carried away by lust. He owed that to Maria. Whatever happened. Never.

“IS SOMETHING WRONG, my son?” he heard someone ask. Arnau turned and found himself face-to-face with the priest who a few minutes earlier had been addressing the congregation. “Oh, it’s you, Arnau,” the man said, recognizing him as one of the bastaixos who frequented Santa Maria. “Is something wrong?”

“Maria.”

The priest nodded sadly.

“Let us pray for her,” he said.

“No, Father,” said Arnau. “Not yet.”

“It’s only in God that you will find comfort, Arnau.”

Comfort? He had no hope of finding that anywhere. Arnau peered again toward his Virgin, but the incense still obscured his view.

“Let us pray,” insisted the priest.

“What were you saying about the Jews?” Arnau asked, still trying to avoid having to pray.

“Throughout Europe they are saying that the Jews are to blame for the plague.” Arnau looked at him inquisitively. “They say that in Geneva, at Chinon castle, some Jews have confessed that the plague was spread by one of their number from Savoy who poisoned wells with a potion prepared by rabbis.”

“Is that true?” Arnau asked him.

“No. The pope has absolved them, but people want someone to blame. Shall we pray now?”

“You do it for me, Father.”

Arnau left Santa Maria. In the square outside he found himself surrounded by a group of about twenty flagellants. “Repent!” they shouted at him, all the while whipping their own backs. “It’s the end of the world!” others spat in his face. Arnau could see blood running down their raw backs and legs, past the hair shirts wound round their waists. He surveyed their faces, their wild, staring eyes. He ran away from them down Calle de Montcada until he could no longer hear their cries ... but something here caught his attention too. The doors! Very few of the huge doorways to the palaces on Calle de Montcada displayed the white crosses that seemed to be everywhere in the rest of the city. Arnau found himself opposite the Puig family palace. There was no cross there either; all the windows were closed, and he could see no sign of life inside the building. Arnau willed the plague to find them wherever they had taken refuge, and for them to suffer as much as Maria had done. Then he hurried away even more quickly than he had from the flagellants.

When he reached the corner of Calle de Montcada and Carders, he again ran into a noisy crowd, this time armed with sticks, swords, and crossbows. “They’re all crazy,” Arnau told himself, stepping back to let them by. The homilies preached in every church of the city had been of little use. Clement the Sixth’s bull had not succeeded in calming people desperate to unleash their anger on someone. “To the Jewry!” he could hear them shouting. “Heretics! Murderers! Repent!” The flagellants were part of the crowd, still lashing their backs and spattering all those around them with blood.

Arnau fell in behind the mob, among a group who were following them silently. Several plague victims were with them. It seemed as though the whole of Barcelona had converged on the Jewry, surrounding the partly walled neighborhood on all four sides. Some took up position to the north, next to the bishop’s palace. Others were on the western side, by the old Roman walls; still others filled Calle del Bisbe, which bordered the Jewry to the east; the rest, including Arnau’s group, were to the south, in Calle de la Boqueria and outside Castell Nou, where the entrance to the Jewry stood. The noise was deafening. They wanted revenge, even though for the moment they were content to stay outside the gates, shaking their sticks and crossbows.

Arnau found some room for himself on the crowded steps of San Jaume church, the same one he and Joanet had been thrown out of all those years ago when they were searching for the Virgin they could call their mother. San Jaume rose close to the southern wall of the Jewry, and from its steps Arnau could see what was happening over the heads of the mob. The garrison of royal soldiers, headed by the city magistrate, was preparing to defend the Jewish quarter. Before launching any attack, a group of citizens went to talk with the magistrate beside the half-open gates of the Jewry and persuade him to withdraw his troops. The flagellants kept up their shouting and dancing around them, while the crowd continued to hurl threats against the Jews, whom they could not even see.

“They won’t withdraw,” Arnau heard a woman next to him say.

“The Jews are royal property; they depend entirely on the king,” another man agreed. “If the Jews die, the king will lose all the taxes he’s imposed on them...”

“And all the loans he’s had from those usurers.”

“Not just that,” said a third man. “If the Jewry is attacked, the king will lose even the furniture the Jews offer him and his court whenever they come to Barcelona.”

“The nobles will have to sleep on the floor,” someone shouted, to general laughter.

Arnau himself could not help smiling.

“The magistrate will defend the king’s interests,” the woman asserted.

She was proved right. The magistrate did not back down, and as soon as the two sides had finished talking, he shut himself inside the Jewry. That was the signal the mob had been waiting for. Before the gate was even shut, those closest to the walls rushed at it, while the others flung sticks, arrows, and stones over the walls. The assault had begun.

Arnau watched as the hate-filled crowd threw themselves at the gates and walls of the Jewry. No one was leading them; the only thing resembling orders was the cries of the flagellants who were still whipping themselves beneath the walls and urging the others to scale them and kill the heretics. When they did succeed in climbing over, many of them fell to the royal soldiers’ swords, but the Jewry was under siege from all four sides now, and many more overran the defenders and began to attack any Jews they could find.

Arnau stayed on the steps of San Jaume for two hours. The war cries reminded him of his days as a soldier: Bellaguarda and Castell-Rosselló. The faces of those who fell mingled with those of the men he himself had killed; the smell of blood took him back to Rosellón, to the lies that had led him to that absurd war, to Aledis and Maria ... As he recalled all this, he left his vantage point.

Leaving behind the massacre, Arnau walked down toward the sea, still thinking of Maria and what had forced him to seek a way out in fighting. All at once, his thoughts were interrupted. He was level with Castell de Regomir, a tower in the old Roman wall, when shouting close by forced him back to reality.

“Heretics!”

“Murderers!”

Arnau found himself confronted by a group of about twenty people filling the street. They were brandishing sticks and knives and shrieking at some others who must have been pressed up against a house wall. Why could they not simply mourn their dead? Arnau did not want to stop, and pushed his way through the enraged attackers. As he was forcing a path for himself, he glanced briefly at the spot they had surrounded: in a house doorway a bloody-faced Moorish slave was using his body to try to protect three children dressed in black with the yellow badge on their chests. Arnau suddenly found himself in between the Moor and his attackers. Silence fell, and the children’s terrified faces peeped out from behind their protector. Arnau glanced at them: how he regretted never having given Maria any children! A stone flew through the air toward them. It grazed Arnau, and when the Moor stepped into its path, hit him in the stomach. He doubled up with pain. A child’s tiny face peered directly at Arnau. His wife had loved children: she had not cared whether they were Christians, Moors, or Jews. She would gaze at them on the beach, in the streets of the city ... Her eyes would follow them tenderly, and then she would look back at him ...

“Move away! Get out of our way, will you?” Arnau heard a voice shout behind his back.

Arnau looked again at the pair of terrified eyes in front of him.

“What do you want with these children?” he growled.

Several men armed with knives confronted him.

“They’re Jews,” they said as one.

“And just for that you’re going to kill them? Aren’t their parents enough for you?”

“They’ve poisoned the wells,” one of the men said. “They killed Jesus. They kill Christian children for their heretical rites. Yes, they tear their hearts out ... they steal the sacred host.” Arnau was not listening. He could still smell the blood of the Jewry ... of Castell-Rosselló. He seized the man closest to him by the arm, punched him in the face, and took his knife. Then he confronted the others.

“Nobody is to harm any children!”

The attackers watched Arnau wielding the knife, drawing circles with it in the air. They saw the look of determination in his eyes.

“Nobody is going to harm any children,” he repeated. “Go and fight in the Jewry, against the soldiers, against grown men.”

“They will kill you,” warned the Moor, who now was behind him.

“Heretic!” the attackers cried.

“Jew!”

Arnau had been taught to attack first, to catch his enemy unawares, not to let him gain confidence, to frighten him. Shouting, “Sant Jordi!” Arnau launched himself at the nearest men. He plunged his dagger into the first one’s stomach, then whirled round, forcing the others to back off. His dagger sliced the chests of several more. From the ground, one of the wounded men stabbed him in the calf. Arnau looked down, seized him by the hair, pulled his head back, and slashed his throat. Blood came spurting out. Three men were lying on the ground; the others began to draw back. “Withdraw when you are outnumbered,” was another piece of advice Arnau remembered. He made as if to charge again, and the assailants fell over one another trying to get away. Without looking behind him, Arnau gestured to the Moor to gather the children to him, and when he could feel them around his legs, he backed away down toward the beach, still glaring at the armed group.

“They’re waiting for you in the Jewry,” he shouted at them, still shepherding the children away.

When he and the children reached the old gate of Castell de Regomir, they broke into a run. Without giving any explanation, he prevented them from heading back to the Jewry.

Where could he hide children? Arnau led them down to Santa Maria. He came to a halt outside the main entrance. From where they stood, they could see inside the unfinished church.

“You’re not planning to take the children into a Christian church, are you?” the slave asked, panting for breath.

“No,” replied Arnau. “But very close to it.”

“Why didn’t you let us return home?” asked the young girl, who was obviously the eldest of the three and had recovered more quickly than the others from their escape.

Arnau felt his calf. The blood was pouring out.

“Because your homes are being attacked,” he told them. “They blame you for the plague. They say you poisoned the wells.” None of them said anything. “I’m sorry,” he added.

The Moorish slave was the first to react: “We can’t stay here,” he said, forcing Arnau to look up from his wound. “Do as you think best, but hide the children.”

“What about you?” asked Arnau.

“I have to find out what has happened to their families. How will I meet you again?”

“You won’t,” said Arnau, realizing he would not have the chance to show him how to get to the Roman cemetery. “I’ll come and find you. Go down to the beach at midnight, by the new fish stall.” The slave nodded. As they were about to separate, Arnau added: “If in three nights you haven’t appeared, I’ll presume you are dead.”

The Moor nodded again, and gazed at Arnau with his big black eyes.

“Thank you,” he said, before running off toward the Jewry.

The smallest child tried to follow him, but Arnau held him back by the shoulders.

THAT FIRST NIGHT, the Moor did not appear at the meeting point. Arnau waited more than an hour for him after midnight, listening to the distant sounds of disturbances in the Jewry and staring at the red glow that filled the sky. While he was waiting, he had time to think about everything that had happened on this insane day. He had three Jewish children hidden under the high altar of Santa Maria, beneath his own Virgin. The entrance to the cemetery that he and Joanet had discovered long ago was still the same as the last time they had been there. The stairs to Plaza del Born had not yet been completed, so that it was easy to get in under the wooden platform at the entrance, although they had to wait crouching outside for almost an hour, until the guards who were patrolling around the church had left.

The children followed him along the dark tunnel without a word of protest until Arnau told them where they were and warned them not to touch anything if they did not want an unpleasant surprise. At that, the three of them burst into tears, and Arnau had no idea how to respond. Maria would have known how to calm them.

“They’re only dead people,” he shouted. “And they didn’t die of the plague. What do you prefer: to be here, alive among the dead, or outside so that you can be killed?” The sobbing stopped. “I’m going out again now to fetch a candle, water, and some food. All right? Is that all right?” he repeated when they said nothing.

“All right,” he heard the girl reply.

“Let’s see. I’ve risked my life for you, and I’m going to risk it again if anybody discovers I am hiding three Jewish children under Santa Maria church. I’m not prepared to do so if when I get back here you’ve all run off. What do you say? Will you wait for me here, or do you want to go out into the streets again?”

“We’ll wait,” the girl said resolutely.

Arnau returned to an empty house. He washed and tried to tend his wound. He bound it up, filled his old wineskin with water, took a lantern and oil to fill it with, a loaf of dry bread and salt meat, and then limped back to Santa Maria.

The children had not moved from the end of the tunnel where he had left them. Arnau lit the lantern and found himself facing three fearful young deer too frightened to respond to his attempt to reassure them with a smile. The girl had her arms round the other two. All three were dark-skinned, with long, clean hair. They looked healthy and attractive, with gleaming white teeth, especially the girl.

“Are they your brothers?” Arnau asked her.

“We’re brother and sister,” she said eventually, pointing to the smaller of the other two. “He is a neighbor.”

“Well, I think that after all that’s happened and what’s still to come, we had better introduce ourselves. My name is Arnau.”

The girl did the honors: she was called Raquel, her brother was Jucef, and their neighbor’s name was Saul. Arnau asked them more questions by the light of the lantern, while every so often the children cast anxious glances toward the cemetery behind them. They were thirteen, six, and eleven years old. They had been born in Barcelona and lived with their parents in the Jewry. They had been going back there when the mob had attacked them. The slave, whom they had always called Sahat, belonged to Raquel and Jucef’s parents. If he had said he would go to the beach, he would do so; he had never failed them.

“Well,” said Arnau after listening to them, “I think it might be useful to have a look at where we are. It’s been a long time, more or less since I was your age, since I’ve been here—although I don’t think anybody has moved.” He was the only one to laugh. He held the lantern up and crawled to the center of the necropolis. The children remained rooted to the spot, terrified at the sight of the open tombs and skeletons. “This is the best I could think of,” he apologized when he saw their looks of terror. “I’m sure nobody will find you here while we wait for things to calm down outside—”

“What will happen if they kill our parents?” Raquel interrupted him.

“Don’t think of that. I’m sure nothing will happen to them. Look, come here to me. There’s a space with no tombs that’s big enough for all of us. Come on!” He gestured energetically for them to approach him.

In the end he succeeded, and the four of them gathered in a small space that allowed them to sit on the floor without having to touch any tombs. The Roman cemetery was exactly the same as the first time Arnau had seen it, with its strange pyramidal tiles and big amphoras with skeletons inside. Arnau placed the lantern on one of them, and offered the children the water, bread, and salt meat. They all drank avidly, but would only eat the bread.

“It’s not kosher,” explained Raquel, pointing to the meat.

“Kosher?”

Raquel explained what kosher meant, and the rituals that had to be performed before members of the Jewish community were allowed to eat meat. They went on talking until the two boys had fallen fast asleep on the girl’s lap. Then, whispering so as not to wake them, Raquel asked Arnau: “Don’t you believe what they say?”

“What about?”

“That we poisoned wells.”

Arnau did not reply for some time.

“Have any Jews died of the plague?” he asked.

“Lors.”

“In that case, no,” Arnau asserted. “I don’t believe it.”

When Raquel also fell asleep, Arnau crawled back out of the tunnel and headed for the beach.

THE ATTACK ON the Jewry lasted two days. All that time, the outnumbered royal forces, together with members of the Jewish community, tried their best to defend the district from the constant assault of an enraged, zealous mob who in the name of Christianity dedicated themselves to pillaging and murder. In the end, the king sent enough soldiers to quell the riot, and things slowly returned to normal.

On the third night Sahat, who had fought alongside his masters, was able to get away and meet Arnau on the beach opposite the fish stall, as agreed.

“Sahat!” came a voice in the darkness.

“What are you doing here?” asked the slave when Raquel threw herself on him.

“The Christian is very ill.”

“Is it ... ?”

“No,” the girl interrupted him, “it isn’t the plague. He doesn’t have any swellings. It’s his leg. The wound has become infected and he has a high fever. He can’t walk.”

“What about the other two?” asked the slave.

“They’re fine ... and my family?”

“They’re waiting for you.”

Raquel took the slave to the platform by the Plaza del Born doorway at Santa Maria.

“Here?” asked the Moor in a puzzled way when the girl slipped in underneath the wooden planks.

“Quiet,” she said. “Follow me.”

They made their way along the tunnel to the Roman cemetery. They all had to help get Arnau out; Sahat crawled backward pulling him by the hands while the children pushed him by the feet. Arnau had lost consciousness. The five of them, with Arnau draped over Sahat’s shoulders and the children dressed in Christian clothes the slave had brought them, headed for the Jewry, making sure they stayed in the darkest corners as much as possible. When they arrived at the Jewry gates, which were guarded by a large contingent of the king’s men, Sahat explained to the captain who the children really were and why they were not wearing their yellow badges. Arnau, he said, was a Christian, but had a fever and needed to see a doctor, as the captain could see for himself. The captain took a quick look at the wound, but soon moved away in case Arnau was a plague victim. But what in fact opened the gates to the Jewry for them was the generous purse of money that the slave slipped into the captain’s hands while he was talking to him.

32

“NOBODY IS GOING to harm those children. Father, where are you? Why, Father? There’s grain in the palace. I love you, Maria ...”

Whenever Arnau was delirious, Sahat made the children leave the room. He called for Raquel and Jucef’s father, Hasdai, to come and help keep Arnau still when he started fighting the soldiers of Roussillon and threatened to reopen the wound on his leg. Master and slave kept watch at the foot of the bed, while a female servant put cold compresses on his forehead. This had already been going on for a week, during which time Arnau received the best care from Jewish doctors as well as constant attention from the Crescas family and their slaves, most of all Sahat, who watched over him day and night.

“The wound is not that serious,” said the doctors, “but the infection has spread to the whole body.”

“Will he live?” asked Hasdai.

“He’s a strong man” was all the doctors would say as they left.

“There’s grain in the palace!” Arnau shouted again a few minutes later. He was sweating and writhing on his bed.

“If it hadn’t been for him,” said Sahat, “we’d all be dead.”

“I know,” said Hasdai, who was standing next to him.

“Why did he do it? He’s a Christian.”

“He’s a good person.”

At night, when Arnau was resting and the house was quiet, Sahat would turn to the east to kneel and pray for the Christian. During the day, he patiently made him drink as much water as possible, and take the potions the doctors had prepared. Raquel and Jucef often came into the room, and if Arnau was not delirious, Sahat let them stay.

“He’s a warrior,” Jucef said on one occasion, his eyes wide open in amazement.

“I’m sure he has been,” agreed Sahat.

“He said he was a bastaix,” Raquel objected.

“In the cemetery, he told us he was a warrior. Perhaps he’s a warrior bastaix.”

“He only said it to keep you quiet.”

“I would wager he is a bastaix,” said Hasdai. “From what he says now, at least.”

“He’s a warrior,” the young boy insisted.

“I don’t know, Jucef.” The slave ruffled his black locks. “Why don’t we wait until he’s better and can tell us himself?”

“Will he get better?”

“Of course. When have you heard of a warrior dying from a leg wound?”

After the children left, Sahat would go up to Arnau and touch his burning brow. “It’s not only the children who are alive thanks to you, Christian. Why did you do it? What drove you to risk your life for a slave and three Jewish children? Live! You must live! I want to be able to talk to you, to thank you. Besides, Hasdai is very rich; I’m sure he will want to reward you.”

A few days later, Arnau began to recover. One morning, Sahat found that his fever was noticeably lower.

“Allah, whose name be praised, has heard my prayers.”

Hasdai smiled when he was able to confirm the improvement.

“He will live,” he went so far as to tell his children.

“Will he tell me about his battles?”

“Son, I’m not sure ...”

But Jucef started to imitate Arnau, whirling the dagger about to take on an imaginary group of attackers. Just as he was about to slash the wounded man’s throat, his sister grasped him by the arm.

“Jucef!” she said to him sternly.

They turned to look at Arnau, and saw him staring at them from the bed. Jucef was terrified.

“How do you feel?” Hasdai asked him.

Arnau tried to answer, but his mouth was too dry. Sahat gave him a glass of water.

“Good,” he managed to say after a few sips. “What about the children?”

Pushed forward by their father, Jucef and Raquel came to his bedside. Arnau tried to smile.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hello,” they replied.

“What about Saul?”

“He’s well,” Hasdai reassured him. “But now you must rest. Come on, children.”

“When you’re better, will you tell me all about your battles?” Jucef asked before his father and sister dragged him out of the room.

Arnau nodded, and smiled again.

Over the next week, the fever completely disappeared, and the wound began to heal. Arnau and Sahat talked whenever the bastaix felt strong enough.

“Thank you,” were his first words to the Moorish slave.

“You’ve already thanked me, remember? Why ... why did you rescue us?”

“The boy’s eyes ... My wife would never have allowed me to ...”

“Maria?” asked Sahat, remembering how Arnau had said the name during his delirium.

“Yes,” said Arnau.

“Would you like us to tell her you are here?” Arnau’s mouth tightened and he shook his head. “Is there anyone you’d like us to tell?” When he saw Arnau’s sorrowful expression, the slave did not insist.

“How did the siege of the Jewry end?” Arnau asked him on another occasion.

“Two hundred men and women murdered. Lots of houses looted or burned.”

“That’s terrible!”

“It’s not as bad as it might have been,” Sabat insisted. Arnau cast him a surprised glance. “We were lucky in the Barcelona Jewry. From the Orient to Castille, Jews have been slaughtered without mercy. More than three hundred communities have been completely destroyed. In Germany, Emperor Charles the Fourth promised a personal pardon to any criminal who killed a Jew or helped destroy a Jewry. Can you imagine what would have happened in Barcelona if instead of protecting us, your king had granted a pardon to everyone who killed a Jew?” Arnau closed his eyes and shook his head. “In Mainz, they burned six thousand Jews at the stake. In Strasbourg, they burned two thousand in a huge funeral pyre in the Jewish cemetery, including women and children. Two thousand at once...”

THE CHILDREN WERE allowed in Arnau’s room only when Hasdai was visiting him and could see they did not disturb him. One day, when Arnau was beginning to be able to get out of bed and take his first steps, Hasdai appeared on his own. Tall and thin, with long black hair, a piercing gaze, and a hook nose, the Jewish man sat opposite him.

“You ought to know ... ,” he said gravely. “Well, I suppose you do know,” he said, correcting himself, “that your priests forbid Christians and Jews to live together.”

“Don’t worry, Hasdai; as soon as I can walk—”

“No,” the Jew interrupted him, “I’m not saying you have to leave my house. You saved my children from certain death, putting your own life at risk. All I own is yours, and I will be eternally grateful to you. You can stay here as long as you wish. My family and I would be very honored if you would do so. All I wanted to do was warn you, especially if you do decide to stay, to be very discreet about it. Nobody will hear about it from us—and by that I mean all our community; you can be sure of that. It’s your decision, but I repeat that we would be very honored and happy if you did decide to do so. What do you say?”

“Who else could tell your son of the battles I’ve seen?”

Hasdai smiled and held out his hand. Arnau took it.

“CASTELL-ROSSELLÓ WAS A mighty fortress ...” Little Jucef sat opposite Arnau in the garden behind the Crescases’ house, legs crossed and eyes wide open. He loved to hear the bastaix’s stories—alert when he was listening to details of the sieges, anxious during the fighting, smiling once victory had been won.

“The defenders fought valiantly,” Arnau told him, “but we soldiers of King Pedro were too strong for them ...”

When he had finished, Jucef was desperate to hear another tale. Arnau told him both true and invented ones. “I attacked only two castles,” he almost confessed. “The rest of the time we plundered the land and tore up the crops ... except for the fig trees.”

“Do you like figs, Jucef?” he asked him instead, remembering the twisted branches rising out of a devastated landscape.

“That’s enough, Jucef,” his father told him, coming into the garden and hearing his son insist on being told yet another story. “Go to bed now.” Jucef obediently left his father and Arnau. “Why did you ask the boy if he liked figs?”

“It’s a long story.”

Without a word, Hasdai sat opposite him in a seat. “Tell me,” his eyes said.

“We destroyed everything,” Arnau said, after briefly describing what had happened, “except for the fig trees. It’s absurd, isn’t it? We laid waste to the land, but in the midst of all that destruction, a solitary fig tree still stood, as though it were looking at us and asking what we were doing.”

Arnau was lost in the maze of his memories, and Hasdai could not bring himself to interrupt him.

“It was a meaningless war,” concluded the bastaix.

“But the following year,” said Hasdai, “the king regained Roussillon. Jaime of Mallorca knelt bareheaded before him and surrendered his armies. Perhaps that first war you were involved in helped to—”

“To kill peasants, children, and poor people of hunger,” Arnau cut in. “It may have meant that Jaime’s army had no provisions, but a lot of innocent people had to die for that. We’re nothing more than playthings in the hands of our nobles. They settle their affairs without caring how much death or misery they bring to other people.”

Hasdai sighed. “Don’t I know it? We’re royal property. We belong to him...”

“I went to war to fight, and in the end all I did was burn poor people’s houses.”

The two men sat for a while lost in thought.

“Well,” said Arnau at length, “now you know the story of the fig trees.”

Hasdai got up and patted Arnau on the shoulder. Then he suggested they go inside. “It’s grown cooler,” he said, glancing up at the sky.

WHEN JUCEF LEFT them on their own, Arnau also talked to Raquel in the small back garden. Instead of talking about the war, Arnau liked to describe his life as a bastaix, and to tell her about Santa Maria.

“We don’t believe Jesus Christ was the Messiah. He still hasn’t come: the Jewish people are still waiting for him,” Raquel explained on one occasion.

“They say you killed him.”

“That’s not true!” she replied, upset. “It’s us who have always been killed and driven out, wherever we tried to settle!”

“They say,” insisted Arnau, “that at Easter you sacrifice a Christian child. You eat his heart and limbs as part of your rituals.”

Raquel shook her head vigorously. “That’s nonsense! You yourself have seen we don’t eat any meat that isn’t kosher, and that our religion doesn’t allow us to drink any blood: what would we do with a child’s heart, let alone his arms or legs? You know my father and Saul’s; can you imagine them eating a child?”

Arnau thought about Hasdai’s face and his wise words; he recalled his patience and the way his eyes shone whenever he looked at his children. How could such a man ever eat the heart of a child?

“What about the host?” he asked Raquel. “They also say you steal them to torture them and make Christ suffer again.”

Raquel waved her hands in denial. “We Jews don’t believe in transubs ...” She snapped her fingers in frustration. She always stumbled over that word whenever she talked about it with her father! “Transubstantiation,” she said quickly.

“In what?”

“In transubs ... stantiation. To you it means that your Jesus Christ is present in the host, that it really is his body. We don’t believe that. To Jews, your host is nothing more than a piece of bread. So it would be stupid of us to torture a bit of bread, wouldn’t it?”

“So nothing you are accused of is true?”

“Nothing.”

Arnau wanted to believe Raquel, especially when she stared at him wide-eyed, begging him to reject the prejudices the Christians held about her community and its beliefs.

“But you are usurers. That’s something you can’t deny.”

Raquel was about to respond, when they both heard her father’s voice.

“No, we are not usurers,” said Hasdai, interrupting them and sitting down next to his daughter. “At least not in the way it is usually meant.” Arnau waited for him to go on. “Look, until a little more than a century ago, in the year 1230, Christians also lent money and charged interest. Both Jews and Christians did so, until a decree from your Pope Gregory the Ninth forbade Christians to make money in this way. Since then, only Jews and a few other groups such as the Lombards have been able to do so. But for twelve hundred years, you Christians lent money with interest. It’s only been a little more than a hundred years that you haven’t been permitted to officially,” said Hasdai, stressing the word, “and yet you condemn us as usurers.”

“Officially?”

“Yes, officially. There are many Christians who lend money using us as intermediaries. But anyway, I wanted to explain to you why we do it. Throughout history, wherever we Jews have been, we’ve depended on the king. We’ve been expelled from many countries; first from our own lands, then from Egypt; later on, in 1183, from France, and some time afterward, in 1290, from England. Jewish communities were forced to emigrate from one country to another. They had to leave all their possessions behind, and to beg permission to settle from the rulers of the countries where they arrived. In response, the kings, as had happened here in Catalonia, took over the Jewish communities and demanded heavy contributions for their wars and other expenses. If we did not make any profits from our money, we wouldn’t be able to fulfill your kings’ exorbitant demands, and we would end up being thrown out yet again.”

“But it’s not only kings you lend money to,” Arnau insisted.

“No, that’s true. And do you know why?” Arnau shook his head. “Because the kings never repay our loans. On the contrary, they are always asking for more and more money for their wars and other extravagances. We have to make money somehow to lend them, or to make a generous contribution when it turns out not to be a loan.”

“You can’t refuse?”

“They would expel us ... or worse, they wouldn’t defend us from Christians attacking us as they did in this city. We would all die.” This time, Arnau nodded, bringing a smile of satisfaction to Raquel’s face when she saw that her father was succeeding in convincing him. Arnau himself had been a witness to how the enraged Barcelona mob had howled their anger against the Jews. “Anyway, remember that we don’t lend money to any Christians who aren’t either merchants or have permits to buy and sell. Almost a century ago, your King Jaime the Conqueror brought in a law that said that whatever commission or deposit made by a Jew to anyone who was not a merchant was to be considered false, invented by the Jews, which means we cannot make a claim against anyone who isn’t a merchant. We can’t place commissions or deposits with anyone but merchants—otherwise we would never see our money again.”

“What’s the difference?”

“It’s completely different, Arnau. You Christians are proud that you follow the dictates of your religion by not lending money for interest, and it’s true that you don’t do it; not openly, at least. Yet you do lend money, but call it something else. Before the Church forbade loans with interest between Christians, business went on much as it does now between Jews and merchants: there were Christians with a lot of money who lent it to other Christians, the merchants—and they repaid the capital with interest.”

“What happened when it was forbidden to lend with interest?”

“It’s simple. As ever, you Christians found a way round the Church’s prohibition. It was obvious that no Christian was going to lend money to another one without making money, as the Church intended. If that were the case, he might as well keep his money and not run any risk. That was when you Christians invented the idea of the commission. Have you heard about that?”

“Yes,” Arnau admitted. “In the port they talk a lot about commissions when a boat loaded with goods arrives, but the truth is, I’ve never really understood what it means.”

“It’s not hard. A commission is nothing more than a loan with interest ... but in another guise. Someone, usually a money changer, lends money to a merchant for him to buy or sell goods. Once the operation is complete, the merchant has to give back the same amount to the money changer, plus a part of the profits he has made. It’s exactly the same as a loan with interest, but called by another name. The Christian who lends the money is making a profit, which is what the Church wants to prohibit—that profit comes from money and not from work. You Christians carry on doing exactly as you did a hundred years ago, before gaining interest from money was forbidden. Only now you call it something different. And when we Jews lend money for a deal, we are usurers, whereas if a Christian makes money through a commission, that’s fine.”

“Is there really no difference?”

“Just one: in commissions, the person who lends the money runs the same risk over the deal: in other words, if the merchant does not come back or loses his goods—if, for example, his ship is attacked by pirates, then the person making the loan loses too. The same isn’t true of a loan as such, because in that case the merchant would still be obliged to return the money plus interest. In reality though, it’s exactly the same, because a merchant who has lost his goods cannot pay us anyway, and we Jews have to fit in with customary practice: merchants want commissions without risk, and we have to accept them because if we didn’t, we would not make enough money to pay what your kings demand. Do you understand now?”

“We Christians do not give loans with interest, but offer commissions, which comes down to the same thing,” Arnau said.

“Exactly. What your Church is trying to prevent is not interest in itself, but making a profit by using money, not by working for it. And they prohibit loans only to those who are not kings, the nobility, or knights: a Christian can lend any of them what is known as a soft loan, because the Church considers this must be for war, and that makes the interest gained right and proper.”

“But only Christian money changers do that,” Arnau argued. “You can’t judge all Christians by what a few—”

“Make no mistake, Arnau,” Hasdai warned him, smiling and raising a finger. “Those money changers get money from Christians, and use it to set up commissions. If they make money from them, they have to repay those Christians who gave them the money in the first place. The money changers are the public face of this business, but the money comes from Christians—from all those who put money into their exchanges. Arnau, there is something that never changes throughout history: whoever has money wants more; a person like that has never given it away, and never will. If your bishops don’t do so, why should their flocks? Call it a loan, a commission, or whatever you like, but people never give something for nothing. And yet we Jews are the usurers.”

As they talked, night fell: a calm, starry Mediterranean night. For a while longer, the three of them sat enjoying the peace and tranquillity of the small back garden behind the Crescas family home. Eventually they were called in for supper, and for the first time since he had been living there, Arnau considered this Jewish family as being the same as him: people with different beliefs, but good people, as good and charitable as the most saintly of Christians. That evening he sat at Hasdai’s table and enjoyed to the full all the flavors of Jewish cooking served by the women of the house.

33

TIME WAS PASSING, and the situation was becoming uncomfortable for all of them. The news reaching the Jewish quarter about the plague was encouraging: cases were becoming rarer and rarer. Arnau needed to get back to his own house. The night before he left, he and Hasdai met in the garden. They tried to talk about unimportant things in a friendly way, but there was an air of sadness to the meeting, and they both avoided looking at each other.

“Sahat is yours,” Hasdai unexpectedly announced, handing over the documents that sealed the matter.

“What do I need a slave for? I won’t even be able to feed myself until our ships put to sea again, so how could I feed a slave? The guild does not allow slaves to work. No, I don’t need Sahat.”

“But you will need him,” Hasdai replied with a smile. “He belongs to you. Ever since Raquel and Jucef were born, Sahat had looked after them as though they were his own children, and I can assure you he loves them as if they were. Neither he nor I can ever repay you for what you did for them. We think that the best way to settle our debt is by making life easier for you. To do that, you will need Sahat’s help, and he is ready to give it.”

“Make life easier for me?”

“We both hope to help make you rich.”

Arnau smiled back at the man who was still his host.

“I’m nothing more than a bastaix. Wealth is for nobles and merchants.”

“You can have wealth too. I’ll provide the means for you to do so. If you act wisely and follow Sahat’s advice, I have no doubt you will become rich.” Arnau looked at him to learn more. “As you know,” said Hasdai, “the plague is slackening. There are fewer and fewer cases, but it has had terrible consequences. No one knows exactly how many people have died in Barcelona, but we do know that four of the five city councillors have perished. That could have disastrous consequences. As regards our affairs, a good number of these who died were money changers who worked in the city. I know, because I used to deal with them and they are no longer there. I think that if you were interested, you could become a money changer ...”

“I know nothing about business or changing money,” Arnau protested. “Besides, every professional in a trade has to pass an examination. I know nothing about any of that kind of thing.”

“Money changers don’t have to pass any test,” Hasdai replied. “I know the king has been asked to establish some rules, but he has not yet done so. Anyone can be a money changer, as long as your countinghouse has got sufficient backing. Sahat has got enough knowledge for both of you. He knows all there is to know about the business. He has been part of my own dealings for many years now. I bought him in the first place because he was already an expert. If you allow him to, he can teach you and you will soon prosper. He may be a slave, but he is someone you can trust; besides which, he feels an extra loyalty toward you because of what you did for my children. They’re the only persons he has ever loved. They are his entire family.” Hasdai looked inquiringly at Arnau through narrowed eyes. “Well?”

“I’m not sure ... ,” Arnau said doubtfully.

“You’ll be backed not only by me, but by all the other Jews who are aware of what you did. We are a grateful people, Arnau. Sahat knows all my agents throughout the Mediterranean, Europe, and in the Orient—even in the distant lands of the sultan of Egypt. You will start with a lot of support for your business, and you can count on all of us to help you. It’s a good offer, Arnau. You won’t have any problems.”

Unsure if he was doing the right thing, Arnau accepted. This was enough to set all the machinery Hasdai had already prepared into motion. First rule: nobody, absolutely nobody was to know that Arnau was being helped by the Jews of Barcelona; that could only be used against him. Hasdai gave him a document that purported to show that all his funds came from a Christian widow living in Perpignan; this was the formal cover he needed.

“Should anyone ask,” Hasdai told him, “don’t say anything, but if they insist, tell them you have inherited it. You will need a lot of money to begin with,” he went on. “First of all you will need to underwrite your countinghouse with the Barcelona magistrates. That is a thousand silver marks. Then you will have to buy a house or the lease on a house in the money changers’ district, that is, either in Calle Canvis Veils or Canvis Nous, and equip it as befits your station. Finally, you will need more money to be able to start trading.”

Money changing? Why not? What was left of his old life? All the people he loved had died from the plague. Hasdai seemed convinced that with Sahat’s aid he could succeed. He had not the slightest idea of what a money changer’s life might be like: Hasdai assured him he would be rich, but what was it like to be rich? All of a sudden he remembered Grau, the only rich man he had ever known. He felt his stomach wrench. No, he would never be like Grau.

He underwrote his countinghouse with the thousand silver marks Hasdai gave him. He swore to the magistrates he would denounce any counterfeit money he came across—wondering to himself how on earth he would recognize it if by chance Sahat were not with him—and would slice it in two with the special shears all money changers kept for that purpose. The magistrate signed the enormous ledgers where he was to write down all his transactions, and, at a time when Barcelona was still in chaos following the effects of the bubonic plague, he was given official approval to operate as a money changer. The days and times when he was to keep his business open were also established.

The second rule that Hasdai proposed concerned Sahat:

“No one should ever suspect he is my gift. Sahat is well-known among the money changers, and if anyone finds out, you could have problems. As a Christian you are allowed to do business with Jews, but you should avoid anyone thinking you are a friend of Jews. There’s another problem regarding Sahat: very few in the profession would understand why I have sold him to you. I have had hundreds of offers for him, each one more generous than the last, but I’ve always turned them down, both because of his abilities and his love for my children. Nobody would understand why he is with you. We thought in fact that Sahat could convert to Christianity.”

“Why would he do that?”

“We Jews are forbidden to have Christian slaves. If any of our slaves convert, we have either to free them, or sell them to another Christian.”

“Will the other money changers believe it?”

“An outbreak of the plague is enough to undermine any religious belief.”

“Is Sahat willing to do it?”

“He is.”

They had spoken about the matter not as master and slave, but as the two close friends they had become over the years.

“Would you be capable of it?” Hasdai had asked him.

“Yes,” answered Sahat. “Allah, all praise and glory to him, will understand. You know the practice of our faith is forbidden in Christian lands. We fulfill our obligations in secret, in the privacy of our own hearts. That is how it will continue to be, however much holy water they sprinkle over me.”

“Arnau is a devout Christian,” Hasdai went on. “If he ever got to find out...”

“He never will. We slaves more than anyone know the art of dissembling. No, not while I’ve been with you, but I have been a slave all my life. Our lives often depend on it.”

The third rule remained a secret between Hasdai and Sahat. “Sahat, I have no need to tell you,” his former master said, with a trembling voice, “how grateful I am to you for this decision of yours. My children and I will be eternally grateful to you.”

“It is I who should thank you.”

“I suppose you know where you should concentrate your efforts.”

“I believe so.”

“Stay away from spices, from fabrics, oils, or wax,” Hasdai warned him, while Sahat nodded, having already expected this kind of advice. “Until the situation has settled, Catalonia will be unable to import these kinds of things. Slaves, Sahat, slaves. After the plague, Catalonia needs people to work. Until now, it’s not something we have done much of. You will find them in Byzantium, Palestine, Rhodes, and Cyprus. And in the markets of Sicily as well, of course. There are lots of Turks and Tartars on sale there. But I think it’s better if you buy them in their own countries. We have agents in each of them who can help you. Your new master should amass a considerable fortune in no time at all.”

“What if he refuses to deal in slaves? He doesn’t look the kind of person—”

“He is a good person.” Hasdai interrupted him to confirm his suspicions. “He’s scrupulous, of humble origin, and he’s very generous. He might well refuse to have anything to do with the slave trade. Therefore, don’t bring them to Barcelona. Don’t let Arnau see them. Take them directly to Perpignan, Tarragona, or Salou, or simply sell them in Mallorca. That’s where there is one of the biggest slave markets in all the Mediterranean. Let others bring them to Barcelona or wherever else they want to take them. Castille also needs a lot of slaves. Anyway, by the time Arnau has worked out how these things function, he will have made a lot of money. If I were you—and I’ll tell him the same myself—I would tell him to become familiar with all the different currencies, how money is changed, the various markets, the routes, and the main sorts of goods that are exported or imported. While he is doing that, you can be getting on with your own affairs. Just remember that we are no more intelligent than anyone else, and that anybody who has money will be importing slaves. There’s a chance to make a lot of money, but it won’t last. Make the most of it while you can.”

“Will you help?”

“In any way I can. I’ll give you letters for all my agents—you know them already. They will supply you with whatever credit you may require.”

“What about the account books? The slaves will have to appear there, and Arnau could find out.”

Hasdai smiled knowingly at his former slave.

“I’m sure you’ll be able to sort out a small detail like that.”

34

“THIS ONE!” ARNAU pointed to a small two-story house that was shut up and had a white cross daubed on the door. Sahat, who had been baptized a Christian with the name of Guillem, nodded at him. “Is that all right?” asked Arnau.

Guillem nodded again, this time with a smile.

Arnau looked at the house and shook his head. All he had done was point to it, and Guillem had immediately consented. This was the first time in his life that his wishes had been so easily granted. Would it always be the same from now on? He shook his head again.

“Is something wrong, Master?”

Arnau glared at him. How often had he told Guillem not to call him that? But the Moor did not agree. According to him, they had to keep up appearances. Now he stared back steadily at Arnau. “Don’t you like it, Master?” he added.

“Yes ... of course I like it. Is it suitable?”

“It couldn’t be better. Look,” said Guillem, pointing to its position, “it’s right on the corner of the two streets where the money changers live: Canvis Nous and Canvis Vells. What could be better?”

Arnau followed Guillem’s finger. Canvis Vells ran down to the sea, to the left of where they were standing. Canvis Nous was immediately opposite them. But that was not why Arnau had chosen it: the important thing was that the house was on the corner of the square of Santa Maria, just by what would be the church’s main doorway.

“A good omen,” he muttered.

“What was that, Master?”

Arnau turned angrily toward Guillem. He could not bear being called that.

“What appearances do we have to keep between the two of us?” he growled. “Nobody can hear or see us.”

“Keep in mind that since you’ve become a money changer, a lot of people are listening and watching you without your realizing it. You have to get used to the idea.”

That same morning, while Arnau wandered along the beach among the boats looking out to sea, Guillem investigated who the owners of the house were. As he had thought, it was the Church. The emphyteutas had died: who better than a money changer to take their place?

That afternoon, they visited the house. The upper floor contained three small rooms. They would furnish two, one for each of them. The ground floor was made up of a kitchen, with a door to what must once have been a small vegetable patch, and, on the other side of a partition, an airy room in which over the next few days Guillem installed a wardrobe, several lanterns, and a long hardwood table, with two chairs behind it and four in front.

“Something’s missing,” said Guillem, and left the room.

Arnau was left sitting alone at what was to be his money-changing table. The long wooden surface shone where he had polished it time and again. He ran his fingers over the backs of the two chairs.

“Choose where you’d like to sit,” Guillem had told him.

Arnau chose the right-hand chair, the one that would be to the left of any future clients. Guillem changed the seats around: to the right he placed an elegant chair with arms, covered in red silk; his own was of less expensive cloth.

Arnau surveyed the otherwise empty room. It was so strange! Only a few months earlier, he had spent his days unloading boats, and now ... He had never before sat in such a wonderful chair! His ledgers were piled up at one end of the table; unused parchment, Guillem had assured him when they purchased them. They also bought quills, inkwells, a balance, several money chests, and a large pair of shears for cutting fake coins.

Guillem took from his purse more money than Arnau had ever seen in his life.

“Who is paying all that?” he asked.

“You are.”

Arnau raised his eyebrows and stared at the purse hanging from Guillem’s belt.

“WOULD YOU LIKE it?” asked the Moor.

“No,” replied Arnau.

In addition to all the things they purchased, Guillem had brought one of his own: a fine abacus with a wooden frame and ivory counters that Hasdai had given him. As he sat, Arnau picked it up and moved the counters from one side to another. What had Guillem told him? The Moor had flicked the counters one way and another, calculating rapidly. Arnau had asked him to show him more slowly, and Guillem had obediently tried to explain how an abacus worked, but... Arnau could not remember the essentials.

He put the abacus down and decided to tidy the table. The ledgers should go opposite his chair—no, better put them in front of Guillem. He would be the one making the entries. The money chests could go on his side; the shears could too, a bit farther away; the quills and the inkwells next to the account books, alongside the abacus. Who else was going to use them?

He was still busy sorting all this out when Guillem reappeared.

“What do you think of it?” Arnau asked him, smiling and showing him all he had done with the table.

“Very good,” said Guillem, smiling back at him, “but that way we will never get any clients, least of all any willing to place their money with us.” Arnau’s face fell. “Don’t worry. There’s only one thing missing. That’s what I went to buy.”

Saying this, Guillem handed him a cloth. Arnau carefully unrolled it: it was a rug of the most expensive scarlet silk, with golden threads round the edges.

“This,” said the Moorish slave, “is what you need on your table. It is the public sign that you have fulfilled all the official requirements and that your countinghouse has been underwritten with the city magistrate for a thousand silver marks. There are severe penalties for anyone who keeps a rug of this kind without proper authorization. Unless you are able to display one, nobody will deposit any money with you.”

FROM THEN ON, Arnau and Guillem devoted themselves to the new business. As Hasdai Crescas had advised, the former bastaix first spent some time learning the basics of the profession.

“The first thing a money changer must be good at,” said Guillem as they both sat behind the table, keeping an eye open to see if anyone was venturing inside, “is exchanging different kinds of money.”

With that he stood up, walked round the table, and dropped a bag of money in front of Arnau.

“Look closely,” he said, taking a coin out of the purse. “Do you recognize it?” Arnau nodded. “It’s a Catalan silver croat. They are minted in Barcelona, only a short distance from here ...”

“I’ve only ever had a few in my purse,” said Arnau, “but I’ve carried a lot more on my back. It seems the king trusts only the bastaix to transport them.”

Guillem smiled and agreed. He dipped his hand into the purse again.

“And this,” he said, taking out another coin and placing it alongside the first one, “is a gold florin from Aragon.”

“I’ve never had any of them,” said Arnau, picking it up and admiring it.

“Don’t worry, you’ll have lots.” Arnau stared at him, but the Moor merely nodded slightly. “This is an old Barcelona coin, the tern.” Guillem put this third coin on the table, and before Arnau could say anything more, he continued pulling out different coins. “Traders use many different kinds of currencies, and you have to be able to recognize them all. There are ones the Muslims use: bezants, mazmudinas, and gold bezants.” Guillem lined one of each of them up in front of Arnau. “Then there are French tournois, the Castillian gold doblas, the gold florins struck in Florence and those minted in Genoa, ducats from Venice, coins from Marseilles, and other Catalan coins, reales from Valencia and Mallorca, the gros from Montpellier, coins from the eastern Pyrenees, and the ones minted in Jaca that are usually found in Lérida.”

“Holy Mother of God!” Arnau exclaimed when the Moor had finished the list.

“You need to be able to recognize them all,” Guillem insisted.

Arnau looked up and down the line of coins several times. He sighed.

“Are there any more?” he asked, peering up at Guillem.

“Yes, lots. But these are the most common ones.”

“How are they changed?”

This time it was the Moor’s turn to sigh. “That’s more complicated.” Arnau encouraged him to go on. “Well, to do that we use the standard currencies: pounds and marks for large sums, shillings and pence for smaller ones.” Arnau nodded at this: he had always talked in shillings and pence, whatever the coins he had been using, although they were usually the same. “If you are given a coin, you need to calculate its value according to these standard currencies, then do the same for the currency you have to change it to.”

Arnau struggled to keep up with his explanations. “How do I know what the values are?”

“They are fixed periodically on the Barcelona exchange, at the Consulate of the Sea. You need to go there regularly to check the official rate of exchange.”

“Does it vary then?” Arnau shook his head. He did not know any of these different currencies, had no idea how to exchange one for another, and on top of that, their values changed!

“Constantly,” the Moor told him. “And you have to know the variations. That’s how a money changer makes his money. One of the most important parts of his business is to buy and sell currency.”

“To buy money?”

“Yes, buying ... or selling money. Buying silver with gold, or the other way round, juggling all the various sorts of currency there are, and doing it here in Barcelona if the rate of exchange is good, or elsewhere if it is better there.”

Arnau threw up his hands in despair.

“It’s quite easy, in fact,” Guillem insisted. “Look: in Catalonia it’s the king who determines the parity between the gold florin and the silver croat. He has set it at thirteen to one: a gold florin is worth thirteen silver croats. But in Florence, Venice, or Alexandria, they don’t care what the king says, and to them, the gold in a florin is not worth thirteen times the silver there is in a croat. Here, the king sets the rate for political reasons; there, they weigh the gold and silver and set their own exchange rate. In other words, if you save silver croats and sell them abroad, you will get more gold than you would here in Catalonia for the same coins. Then if you bring the gold back here, you will still get thirteen croats for each gold florin.”

“Why doesn’t everyone do that then?” Arnau objected.

“Everyone who can does. But someone who has only ten or a hundred croats does not bother. The people who do are the ones who have many other people prepared to deposit their ten or hundred croats with them.” The two men looked at each other. “And that is us,” the Moor concluded, spreading his palms.

Some time later, when Arnau was already becoming skilled in recognizing the different currencies and understanding how to exchange them, Guillem started to explain the trade routes and the goods bought and sold along them.

“Nowadays the main one,” he said, “is the route from Crete to Cyprus, from there to Beirut, and from there to Damascus or Alexandria ... although the pope has forbidden trade with Alexandria.”

“So how is it done?” asked Arnau, playing with the abacus in front of him.

“With money, of course. You buy a pardon.”

Arnau remembered the explanation he had heard in the royal quarries about how the royal dockyards were being paid for.

“And do we trade only around the Mediterranean?”

“No. We trade with everyone. With Castille, with France and Flanders, although you are right, it is mostly around the Mediterranean. The difference is the kind of goods we trade. We buy cloth in France, England, and Flanders, especially expensive materials: wool from Toulouse, Bruges, Malines, Dieste, or Vilages, although we sell them Catalan linen too. We also buy copper and tin goods. In the Orient, in Syria and Egypt, we buy spices ...”

“Pepper,” said Arnau.

“Yes, pepper. When people talk about the spice trade to you, they also mean wax, sugar, and even elephant tusks. If they talk of fine spices, then they are referring to what you commonly imagine them to be: cinnamon, cloves, pepper, nutmeg, and so on ...”

“Did you say wax? Do we import wax then? How can it be that we import wax when the other day you told me we export honey?”

“That’s how it is,” the moor interrupted. “We export honey but import wax. We have too much honey, but the churches use a lot of wax.” Arnau recalled the first bastaix duty in Santa Maria: to ensure there were always candles lit beneath the statue of the Virgin of the Sea. “Wax comes from Dacia via Byzantium. The other main goods we trade in,” Guillem went on, “are foodstuffs. Many years ago, Catalonia exported wheat, but now we have to import all kinds of cereals: wheat, rice, millet, and barley. We export olive oil, wine, dried fruits, saffron, bacon, and honey. We also sell salted meat...”

At that moment, a client came in. Arnau and Guillem fell silent. The man sat opposite them and, after an exchange of greetings, deposited a sizable sum of money with them. Guillem was pleased: he did not know the client, which was a good sign, as it meant they were beginning not to have to depend on Hasdai’s clients. Arnau dealt with him in a professional way, counting out the coins and verifying their authenticity—although for good measure he passed them one by one to Guillem. Then he wrote down the sum deposited in his ledger. Guillem watched him write. Arnau had improved: his efforts were bearing fruit. The Puig family’s tutor had taught him the alphabet, but he had not written anything for years.

While waiting for the seagoing season to begin, Arnau and Guillem spent nearly all their time preparing commission contracts. They bought goods for export, joined with other traders to charter ships, or contracted them and discussed what cargoes to fill them with on the return journeys.

“What profits do the merchants we are contracting make?” Arnau wanted to know.

“That depends on the commission. On normal ones, they take a quarter of the profits. If the transaction is in gold or silver money, it does not amount to that much. We state the exchange rate we want, and the merchants make their profits from whatever they can get above that.”

“How do they manage in such distant lands?” Arnau asked, trying to imagine what these places were like. “They are foreign countries, where people speak other tongues... everything must be different.”

“Yes, but don’t forget that in all those cities,” Guillem replied, “Catalonia has consulates. They’re like the Consulate of the Sea here in Barcelona. There is a consul appointed by the city of Barcelona in every port. He tries to see that everything in commerce is carried out fairly, and mediates in any disputes that might arise between Catalan traders and local merchants or authorities. Each consulate has his own warehouse. Warehouses are walled premises where Catalan merchants can stay and where their goods can be stored until they are sold or loaded on board ship. Every warehouse is like a part of Catalonia on foreign soil. The person with authority over them is the consul, not the authorities of the country they are in.”

“Why is that?”

“Every country is interested in trade. They can levy taxes and fill their coffers from it. Trade is a different world, Arnau. We may be at war with the Saracens, but, for example, since the last century Catalonia has had consulates in Tunis or Bugia, and make no mistake, no Arab leader would ever attack one.”

ARNAU ESTANYOL’S MONEY-CHANGING business was thriving. The plague had decimated Barcelona’s money changers, the presence of Guillem was a guarantee for investors, and as the plague receded, more and more people wanted to put the money they had hidden at home to good use. And yet Guillem could not sleep. “Sell them in Mallorca,” Hasdai had recommended, referring to slaves, so that Arnau would not find out about it. Guillem had followed the advice: would that he hadn’t! he told himself, tossing and turning on his bed. He had used one of the last ships to leave Barcelona, at the start of October. Byzantium, Palestine, Rhodes, and Cyprus—those were the destinations of the four merchants who set sail in the name of Arnau Estanyol, supplied with bills of exchange that Guillem had handed to Arnau for signature. The former bastaix had scarcely even glanced at them. Now the merchants were to buy slaves and transport them to Mallorca. Guillem shifted once more in bed.

The political situation was conspiring against him. Despite the holy pontiff’s efforts to mediate, King Pedro had conquered the Cerdagne and Roussillon a year after his first attempt, when the truce he had agreed to had run out. On the fifteenth of July 1344, after most of his villages and towns had capitulated, King Jaime the Third knelt bareheaded before his brother-in-law. He begged for mercy and handed over his lands to the count of Barcelona. King Pedro left him as lord of Montpellier and viscount of Omelades and Carladés, but recovered the Catalan territory his ancestors had once possessed: Mallorca, Roussillon, and the Cerdagne.

However, after surrendering in this way, Jaime of Mallorca gathered a small army of sixty knights and three hundred foot soldiers and made for the Cerdagne to fight his brother-in-law again. King Pedro did not even deign to go and do battle against him, but instead sent his lieutenants. Weary, unhappy, and defeated yet again, King Jaime sought refuge from Pope Clement the Sixth, who still supported him. While he was under the Church’s safe protection, he thought up the last of his schemes: he sold Henri the Sixth of France the title of lord of Montpellier for twelve thousand golden crowns, then used that money, together with loans from the Church, to equip a fleet conceded him by Queen Juana of Naples. In 1349, he and his fleet disembarked in Mallorca.

Guillem had planned for the slaves to arrive with the first ships of the year 1349. A great deal of money was at stake. If anything went wrong, Arnau’s name—however strongly he was backed by Hasdai Crescas—would suffer among the agents he would need to work with in the future. He was the one who had signed the bills of exchange, and even though they were guaranteed by Hasdai, they would have to be paid. Relations with agents in far-off countries depended on trust, absolute trust. How could a money changer succeed if his first operation was a failure?

“Even he told me to avoid having anything to do with Mallorca,” Guillem confessed one day to Hasdai, the only person he could admit his fears to, as they walked in the Jewish man’s garden.

They did not look each other in the eye, and yet they both knew they were thinking the same. Four slave ships! If they failed, it could even be the ruin of Hasdai.

“If King Jaime will not keep the word he gave the day he surrendered,” said Guillem, finally looking at Hasdai, “what will become of Catalan trade and goods?”

Hasdai said nothing: what was there to say?

“Perhaps your merchants will choose another port,” he said at length.

“Barcelona?” mused Guillem, shaking his head.

“Nobody could have foreseen this,” said the Jew, trying to reassure him. Arnau had saved his children from certain death. What was this in comparison?

In May 1349 King Pedro sent the Catalan fleet to Mallorca, right in the middle of the seagoing season, right in the middle of the trading season.

“What good fortune we did not send any ships to Mallorca,” Arnau commented one day.

Guillem had to sit down.

“What would happen,” asked Arnau, “if we had sent any?”

“What do you mean?”

“We take money from people and invest it in commissions. If we had sent ships to Mallorca and King Jaime had requisitioned them, we would lose both the money and the goods on board; we wouldn’t be able to return the deposits. The commissions are at our own risk. What happens in cases like that?”

“Abatut,” the Moor replied tersely.

“Abatut?”

“If a money changer cannot repay the deposits, the magistrate gives him six months to settle the debts. If by the end of that time he has been unable to pay them off, he is declared abatut or bankrupt. He is imprisoned on bread and water, and all his possessions are sold to pay his debtors ...”

“I don’t have any possessions.”

“If those possessions are insufficient,” Guillem continued reciting from memory, “he is beheaded outside his countinghouse as a warning to all the others.”

Arnau said nothing.

Guillem did not dare look at him. How was he to blame for any of this?

“Don’t worry,” he told him. “It will never happen.”

35

THE WAR CONTINUED in Mallorca, but Arnau was happy. Whenever there was no work to do, he stood at the door of his countinghouse and looked out. Now that the plague had gone, Santa Maria was coming back to life. The tiny Romanesque church he and Joanet had known no longer existed; work on the new church was steadily advancing toward the main doorway. He could spend hours watching the masons placing the blocks of stone; he had a vivid memory of all those he had carried. Santa Maria meant everything to Arnau: his mother, his acceptance into the guild ... and of course, a place of refuge for the Jewish children. Occasionally a letter from his brother made him even happier. Joan’s letters were always short, and told him only about his health and the fact that he was studying hard.

As he looked out, a bastaix appeared carrying a stone. Few of the guild members had survived the plague. His own father-in-law, Ramon, and many others had died. Arnau had wept for them on the beach with his former companions.

“Sebastiá,” he muttered when he recognized the man.

“What did you say?” he heard Guillem ask behind him.

Arnau did not turn round.

“Sebastiá,” he repeated. “That man carrying the stone over there is called Sebastiá.”

As he passed by, the bastaix called a greeting, without turning his head or pausing. His lips were drawn in a tight line from the effort.

“For many years, that could have been me,” Arnau went on, his voice choked with emotion. Guillem made no comment. “I was only fourteen when I took my first stone to the Virgin.” At that moment, another bastaix walked past the door. Arnau greeted him. “I thought I was going to snap in two, that my spine was going to break, but you can’t imagine the satisfaction I felt when I finally got there ... my God!”

“There must be something good about your Virgin for people to sacrifice themselves for her like that,” he heard the Moor say.

At that they both fell silent, watching the line of bastaixos passing by on their way to the church.

THE BASTAIXOS WERE the first to turn to Arnau.

“We need money,” Sebastiá, who by now was one of the guild aldermen, told him straight-out one day. “Our coffers are empty, our needs are great, and at the moment there is little work, and what there is of it is badly paid. After the plague, our members are finding it hard to survive, so I cannot force them to contribute to our funds until they have recovered from the disaster.”

Arnau looked across at Guillem. He sat next to him behind the table with its glittering scarlet silk rug without showing the slightest emotion.

“Is the situation really that bad?” asked Arnau. “Worse than you could imagine. Food has become so expensive we bastaixos cannot even provide for our families. On top of that, there are the widows and orphans of those who died. We have to help them. We need money, Arnau. We’ll pay you back every last penny you lend us.”

“I know.”

Arnau looked across again at Guillem to seek his approval. What did he know about lending money? Until now he had only taken in money, never lent it out.

Guillem covered his face in his hands. He sighed.

“If it’s not possible... ,” Sebastiá started to say.

“It is possible,” said Guillem. The war had been going on for two months now, and there was no news of his slaves. What did a few extra losses matter? Hasdai would be the one facing ruin. Arnau could allow himself to make the loan. “If your word is enough for my master...”

“It is,” Arnau said emphatically.

Arnau counted out the money the guild of bastaixos was asking him for, and solemnly handed it over to Sebastiá. Guillem saw them shake hands across the table, both of them standing there trying clumsily to hide their emotions as their handshake went on and on.

Just as Guillem was losing all hope during the third month of the war, the four merchant ships arrived together in Barcelona. When the first of them had called in at Sicily and heard about the war in Mallorca, the captain had chosen to wait for more Catalan ships to arrive, including Guillem’s three other galleys. Together, they all decided to avoid Mallorca, and instead sold their cargoes in Perpignan, the second city of Catalonia. On their return to Barcelona, they met the Moor as agreed not in Arnau’s countinghouse but in the city warehouse in Calle Carders. There, once they had deducted their quarter of the profits, they gave him bills of exchange for the rest, plus everything that was due to Arnau. A fortune! Catalonia needed people to work, and the slaves had been sold at exorbitant prices.

When the merchants had left the warehouse and no one could see him, Guillem kissed the bills of exchange once, twice, a thousand times. He set off back to Arnau’s countinghouse, but when he reached Plaza del Blat, he changed his mind and went into the Jewry instead. After giving Hasdai the good news, he headed for Santa Maria, beaming at the sky and everyone he saw.

When he entered the countinghouse, he saw that Arnau was with Sebastiá and a priest.

“Guillem,” said Arnau, “this is Father Juli Andreu. He has replaced Father Albert.”

Guillem nodded awkwardly to the priest. “More loans,” he thought.

“It’s not what you might imagine,” Arnau told him. Guillem felt the bills of exchange in his pocket and smiled. What did he care? Arnau was a rich man. He smiled again, but Arnau misinterpreted his smile. “It’s even worse,” he said seriously.

“What could be worse than lending to the Church?” the Moor almost asked, but thought better of it, and greeted the guild alderman instead.

“We have a problem,” Arnau concluded.

The three men sat gazing at the Moor for a few moments. “Only if Guillem accepts,” Arnau had insisted, ignoring the reference the priest had made to his being only a slave.

“Have I ever told you about Ramon?” Guillem shook his head. “He was a very important person in my life. He helped ... he helped me a lot.” Guillem was still standing next to them, as befitted a slave. “He and his wife died of the plague, and the guild cannot continue to look after his daughter. We’ve been talking ... They’ve asked me ...”

“Why do you want my opinion, Master?”

When he heard this, Father Juli Andreu turned and looked triumphantly at Arnau.

“The Pia Almoina and the Casa de la Caritat can’t cope anymore,” Arnau went on. “They can’t even hand out bread, wine, and stew to beggars every day as they used to. The plague has hit them badly too.”

“What is it that you want, Master?”

“They are suggesting I adopt her.”

Guillem felt for the bills of exchange once more. “You could adopt twenty children if you wished,” he thought.

“If that is your desire,” was all he said.

“I don’t know anything about children,” Arnau objected.

“All you have to do is give them affection and a home,” said Sebastiá. “You have the home ... and it seems to me you have more than enough affection.”

“Will you help me?” Arnau asked Guillem, ignoring Sebastiá.

“I’ll obey you in whatever way you wish.”

“I don’t want obedience. I want... I’m asking for your help.”

“Your words do me honor. I will willingly help you,” Guillem promised. “In whatever you need.”

THE GIRL WAS eight years old and was called Mar, like Arnau’s Virgin. In little more than three months, she recovered from the shock of losing her parents to the plague. From then on, it was not the clinking of coins or the scratching of pens on vellum that could be heard in the house: it was laughter and the sound of running feet. At their places behind the table, Arnau and Guillem would scold her whenever she managed to escape from the slave Guillem had bought to look after her and run into the countinghouse, but as soon as she had gone, both men always smiled at each other.

Arnau had been angry when Donaha the slave first appeared.

“I don’t want any more slaves!” he shouted, cutting across Guillem’s arguments.

At that the thin, filthy girl dressed only in rags had burst into tears.

“Where would she be better off than here?” Guillem asked Arnau. “If you’re really so against it, set her free, but she will only sell herself to someone else. She has to eat... and we need a woman to look after the child.”

The girl clung to Arnau’s knees. He tried to struggle free.

“Do you know how much she must have suffered?” Guillem said, his eyes narrowing. “If you reject her ...”

In spite of himself, Arnau agreed to take her on.

As well as employing the girl, Guillem found the answer to the problem of the fortune they had gained from the sale of the other slaves. After he had paid Hasdai as the sellers’ agent in Barcelona, he gave all the remaining profits to a Jew whom Hasdai trusted who happened to be in Barcelona at the time.

Abraham Levi arrived one morning at the countinghouse. He was a tall, gaunt man with a scrawny white beard, wearing a black coat and the yellow badge. He greeted Guillem, who presented him to Arnau. Then he sat opposite Arnau and gave him a bill of exchange for the total of the profits.

“I want to deposit this amount with you, Messire Arnau,” he said.

Arnau’s eyes opened wide when he saw how much was involved, and he quickly passed the document to Guillem for him to read.

“But... ,” he started to say, while Guillem feigned surprise at what he was reading, “this is a lot of money. Why do you want to deposit it with me, and not someone of your own...”

“... faith?” said the Jew. “I’ve always trusted Sahat. I don’t think his change of name,” he went on, glancing at the Moor, “will have affected his judgment. I’m going on a journey, a very long one, and I want you and Sahat to put my money to work.”

“For depositing a sum this large, we will immediately owe you a quarter, isn’t that right, Guillem?” The Moor nodded. “But how can we pay you your profit if you’re about to leave on such a long journey? How can we keep in touch with you... ?”

“Why all this fuss?” Guillem wondered. He had not given the Jew precise instructions, but Levi was more than capable of coping.

“Reinvest it all,” he told Arnau. “Don’t worry about me. I don’t have any children or family, and I won’t need the money where I’m going. Someday, perhaps far off in the future, I will claim it back, or send someone to claim it. Until then, you are not to worry. I’ll be the one who gets in touch with you. Is that a problem?”

“Of course not,” replied Arnau. Guillem breathed a sigh of relief. “If that is what you want, so be it.”

They completed the transaction and Abraham Levi stood up.

“I have to say good-bye to some friends in the Jewry,” he said as he bade the two of them farewell.

“I’ll go with you,” said Guillem, making sure Arnau had no objection.

From the countinghouse the two men went to a scribe, in whose presence Abraham Levi signed away his rights to the money he had just deposited with Arnau Estanyol, and ceded him any profits that might accrue from this capital. Guillem returned to the countinghouse with the document hidden in his clothing. It was only a matter of time, he thought as he walked through the city. Formally, the money belonged to the Jew; that was what Arnau’s account books showed. But nobody could ever claim it from him, as Abraham Levi had signed away all his rights to it. And the three-quarters of the profits made on this capital that corresponded directly to Arnau would be more than enough for him to multiply his fortune.

That night while Arnau slept, Guillem went down to the countinghouse. He had found a loose stone in the wall. He wrapped Abraham Levi’s document in a cloth and hid it behind the stone, which he replaced as best he could. One day he would ask one of the workmen at Santa Maria to seal it properly. That was where Arnau’s fortune could lie until he found a way to tell him where it had come from. It was all a matter of time.

A matter of a long time, Guillem had to admit to himself one day when he and Arnau were walking back along the beach after attending to some business at the Consulate of the Sea. Slaves were still arriving at Barcelona; human goods that the boatmen transported to the shore crowded into their small craft. Men and boys who could work, but also women and children whose wailing led both men to stop and look at what was going on.

“Listen to me, Guillem. No matter how bad a situation we may find ourselves in,” said Arnau, “we will never finance any trade in slaves. I would prefer to be beheaded by the city magistrate before I did that.”

They watched as the galley was rowed farther out to sea.

“Why is he leaving?” Arnau asked without thinking. “Why doesn’t he take on another cargo for the return journey?”

Guillem turned toward him, shaking his head gently.

“He’ll be back,” he assured Arnau. “He’s only going to open sea... to carry on unloading,” he ended, with a trembling voice.

Arnau watched the galley heading out to sea. For a few moments, he said nothing.

“How many of them die?” he asked at length.

“Too many,” said the Moor, remembering one such ship.

“Never, Guillem! Remember that: never!”

36

I January 1354

Plaza de Santa Maria de la Mar

Barcelona

OF COURSE IT would have to be outside Santa Maria, thought Arnau. He was standing at one of his windows watching as the whole of Barcelona crowded into the square, the adjoining streets, onto the scaffolding, and even inside the church, all of them staring at the dais the king had ordered erected in the square. King Pedro the Third had not chosen Plaza del Blat, the cathedral, the exchange building, or the magnificent shipyards he himself was building. He had chosen Santa Maria, the people’s church, the church being constructed thanks to the united efforts and sacrifices of all the citizens of Barcelona.

“There’s nowhere in all Catalonia that better represents the spirit of the people of Barcelona,” he had commented to Guillem that morning as they surveyed the work going on to erect the platform. “The king knows it, and that’s why he chose here.”

Arnau shivered. His whole life had revolved around that church!

“It will cost us money,” the Moor complained.

Arnau turned toward him to protest, but the Moor would not take his eyes off the platform, so Arnau chose not to say anything more.

Five years had gone by since they had opened the countinghouse for business. Arnau was thirty-two years old, happy ... and rich, very rich. He lived austerely, but his ledgers showed he had amassed a considerable fortune.

“Let’s have breakfast,” he said finally, putting his hand on Guillem’s shoulder.

Downstairs in the kitchen Donaha was waiting for them with Mar, who was helping her set the table. When the two men appeared, Donaha carried on working, but Mar ran toward them.

“Everyone’s talking about the king’s visit!” she cried. “Do you think we could get near him? Will his knights be with him?”

Guillem sat down at the table and sighed.

“He’s come to ask us for more money,” he explained to her.

“Guillem!” Arnau rebuked him when he saw the girl’s puzzled expression.

“But it’s true,” said the Moor in self-defense.

“No, Mar, it’s not,” said Arnau, winning the reward of a smile. “The king has come to ask for our help in conquering Sardinia.”

“Help meaning money?” asked Mar, winking at Guillem.

Arnau looked at her, and then at Guillem: they were both smiling at him mischievously. How the girl had grown! She was almost a woman now: beautiful, intelligent, and with a charm that could enchant anyone.

“Money?” the girl repeated, interrupting his thoughts.

“All wars cost money!” Arnau was forced to admit.

“Aha!” said Guillem, spreading his palms.

Donaha began to fill their bowls.

“Why don’t you tell her,” Arnau went on when Donaha had finished, “that in fact it doesn’t cost us money. It makes us more?”

Mar stared wonderingly at the Moor.

Guillem hesitated.

“We have had three years of special taxes,” he said, refusing to accept that Arnau was right. “Three years of war that we people of Barcelona have financed.”

Mar smiled once more, and looked toward Arnau.

“That’s true,” Arnau conceded. “Exactly three years ago we Catalans signed a treaty with Venice and Byzantium to declare war on Genoa. Our aim was to conquer Corsica and Sardinia, which according to the Treaty of Agnani ought to be feudal possessions of Catalonia and yet are still controlled by the Genoese. Sixty-eight armed galleys!” Arnau raised his voice. “Sixty-eight armed galleys—twenty-three from Catalonia, the rest of them from Venice and Greece—joined battle with sixty-five Genoese men-o’- war.”

“What happened?” asked Mar, when Arnau unexpectedly fell silent.

“Neither side won a victory. Our admiral, Pone de Santa Pau, died in the battle. Only ten of our twenty-three galleys came back. What happened then, Guillem?” The Moor shook his head. “Go on, Guillem, tell her,” Arnau insisted.

Guillem sighed.

“The Byzantines betrayed us,” he intoned. “They made peace with Genoa and in return gave them the exclusive monopoly on trade with their city.”

“What else happened?” insisted Arnau.

“We lost one of the most important trade routes in the Mediterranean.”

“Did we lose money?”

“Yes.”

Mar continued to switch her gaze between the two men. Over by the fire, Donaha was following their argument.

“A lot of money?”

“Yes.”

“More than we have given the king since?”

“Yes.”

“Only if the Mediterranean is ours can we trade in peace,” Arnau concluded triumphantly.

“What about the people from Byzantium?” Mar wanted to know.

“The following year, King Pedro equipped a fleet of fifty galleys commanded by Bernat de Cabrera, and defeated the Genoese off Sardinia. Our admiral captured thirty-three enemy galleys and sank another five. Eight thousand Genoese died, and a further three thousand two hundred were taken prisoner. But only forty Catalans lost their lives! After that the Byzantines changed their minds,” he added, gazing into Mar’s eyes, which were sparkling with curiosity, “and opened up their ports to trade with us once more.”

“Three years of special taxes that we are still paying,” Guillem noted.

“But if the king now rules over Sardinia and we can trade with Byzantium, why has he come here now?” asked Mar.

“The Sardinian nobles, led by a certain judge in the city of Arborea, have risen up against King Pedro. He has to go and quash the uprising.”

“The king,” Guillem protested, “should be satisfied with having his trade routes open and receiving his taxes. Sardinia is a rough, inhospitable land. We will never succeed in taming it.”

The king spared no pomp in appearing before his people. Up on his dais, his short stature went unnoticed. He was dressed in his finest robes, the bright scarlet of his doublet glinting in the winter sunlight as much as the precious stones adorning it. He had made sure he was wearing his golden crown, and the small dagger of office hung at his belt. His retinue of nobles and courtiers was not to be outdone and wore equally magnificent costumes.

The king spoke to his people, whipping them up into a frenzy. When before had they ever heard a king addressing ordinary citizens in this way, explaining what his plans were? He spoke about Catalonia, its lands and its interests. When he went on to talk of the betrayal of Arborea in Sardinia, the crowd raised their fists in the air and clamored for vengeance. He continued to stir them up, until finally he asked them for the help he needed: by then, they would have handed over their children to him if he had so desired.

Everyone in Barcelona had to pay their contribution: Arnau was taxed heavily as an authorized money changer. Soon afterward, King Pedro set off for Sardinia in command of a fleet of a hundred ships.

After the king’s army had left Barcelona, the city returned to normal. Arnau went back to his countinghouse, to Mar, to Santa Maria, and to helping all those who came asking for a loan.

Guillem had to get used to a way of doing business very different from the one he had known with the other money changers and merchants he had worked with, including Hasdai Crescas. At first he was opposed to it, and made no secret of his position whenever Arnau opened his purse to lend money to one of the many workmen who seemed to need it.

“Don’t they pay? Don’t they return all our money?” Arnau asked him.

“But they don’t pay any interest,” Guillem objected. “That money could be making a profit.”

“How often have you told me we should buy a palace, that we should be living in more luxury than we do? How much would that cost, Guillem? You know it’s infinitely more than all the sums I’ve lent to these people.”

Guillem was forced to keep quiet. Above all, because it was true. Arnau lived modestly in his house on the corner of Canvis Nous and Canvis Vells. The only thing he spent money on was Mar’s education. The girl went to a merchant friend’s house to learn from the tutors there, and also at Santa Maria.

It had not been long before the commission of works of the church had come to ask Arnau for funds as well.

“I already have a chapel,” Arnau told them when they suggested he might like to dedicate one of the side chapels. “Yes,” he said when they looked at him in surprise, “my chapel is the Jesus Chapel, the one the bastaixos look after. That will always be mine. But anyway... ,” he said, opening his money chest, “how much do you need?”

“How much do you need? How much could you make do with? Will this be enough?” These were questions Guillem had to get used to hearing. As people started greeting him on the street, smiled at him, and thanked him whenever he was on the beach or in La Ribera neighborhood, he came to accept Arnau’s approach. “Perhaps he’s right,” he began to think. Arnau was constantly giving to others, but had he not done the same with him and the three Jewish children who were about to be stoned, complete strangers to him? If Arnau had been different, he, Raquel, and Jucef would in all likelihood have been killed. Why should he change now, just because he was rich? So Guillem, just like Arnau, began to smile at everyone he met and to thank strangers who made way for him in the street.

Yet some decisions Arnau had taken over the years seemed to have nothing to do with that attitude. It was logical enough that he should refuse to take part in the slave trade, but, Guillem wondered, why did he sometimes turn down opportunities that had nothing to do with slaves?

At the beginning, Arnau simply announced his decision:

“I’m not convinced.”

“I don’t like it.”

“I don’t understand it.”

On one such occasion, the Moor’s patience was exhausted.

“It’s a good opportunity, Arnau,” he said as the traders left their countinghouse. “What’s wrong? Sometimes you reject things that would bring us a good profit. I don’t understand. I know I have no right to—”

“Yes, you have,” Arnau butted in, without turning toward him. “I’m sorry, it’s just that...” Guillem waited for him to make up his mind. “Look, I will never have anything to do with a deal that involves Grau Puig. I never want to see my name associated with his.”

Arnau stared straight in front of him, somewhere in the distance.

“Will you tell me why one day?”

“Why not?” mused Arnau. He turned to him and began to explain all that had happened between him and the Grau family.

GUILLEM KNEW GRAU Puig, because he had worked with Hasdai Crescas. The Moor wondered why, when Arnau was so adamant about having nothing to do with him, the baron seemed willing to do business with him. Could it be, after all that Arnau had told him, that he did not feel the same way?

“Why?” he asked Hasdai Crescas one day, after he had briefly told him Arnau’s story, confident it would not leave those four walls.

“Because there are many people who will not have any dealings with Grau Puig. I haven’t done so for some time now. And there are lots more like me. He’s a man obsessed with being somewhere he was not born to be. While he was an artisan, you could trust him, but now ... now he is aiming for something else. He did not really know what he was doing when he married a noblewoman.” Hasdai shook his head. “To be a noble you have to have been born one. You have to have drunk it with your mother’s milk. I’m not saying that’s a good thing, or trying to defend it, but that’s the way the nobility survives and succeeds in overcoming the difficulties of their position. Besides, if a Catalan baron is ruined, who would dare challenge him? They are proud, arrogant even, born to give orders and to feel they are superior to everyone else, even when they are ruined. But Grau Puig has managed to become a noble only through his money. He spent a fortune on his daughter Margarida’s dowry, and that has almost bankrupted him. All Barcelona is aware of it! People laugh at him behind his back, and his wife knows it! What is a simple artisan doing living in a palace on Calle de Montcada? The more people laugh at him, the more he has to prove himself by spending more. What would Grau Puig be without money?”

“You mean to say that... ?”

“I don’t mean to say anything, but I won’t have any dealings with him. In that sense, if for a different reason, your master is quite right.”

From then on, Guillem paid particular attention to any conversation where Grau Puig’s name came up. At the exchange, the Consulate of the Sea, in business deals, when goods were being bought or sold, or during general conversations about the trade situation, the baron’s name featured far too often.

“His son, Genis Puig... ,” he said to Arnau one day after coming back from the exchange, as they stood gazing at the sea, which seemed calmer and gentler than ever. When he heard the name, Arnau turned sharply to his companion. “Genis Puig has had to ask for a loan on easy terms in order to follow the king to Mallorca.” Were Arnau’s eyes gleaming? Guillem looked at him steadily. He had not said anything, but wasn’t that a gleam in his eye? “Do you want to know more?”

Arnau still said nothing, but eventually nodded. His eyes had narrowed, and his lips were drawn in a tight line. He nodded again as he heard the details from Guillem.

“Do you give me authority to take all the decisions I consider necessary?” asked the Moor.

“I don’t give you the authority. I beg you to do it, Guillem.”

Discreetly, Guillem began to use his knowledge and all the contacts he had acquired over years of doing business in Barcelona. The fact that the son, Don Genis, had been forced to take up one of the special loans reserved for the nobility meant that his father could no longer meet the costs of going to war. Those soft loans, thought Guillem, still meant a high rate of interest had to be paid: they were the only ones where Christians could lend money with interest. Why would a father accept that his son paid interest unless he himself did not have the capital? And what about Isabel? That harpy who had destroyed Arnau’s father and Arnau himself, who had forced Arnau to crawl on his knees to kiss her feet, how could she accept something like that?

Over the next few months, Guillem cast his nets wide. He talked to friends, to anyone who owed him favors, and sent messages to all his agents: What kind of situation was Grau Puig, the Catalan baron and merchant, really in? What did they know about him, his business affairs, his finances... his solvency?

As the seagoing season was coming to an end, and ships were heading back to the port of Barcelona, Guillem started to receive replies to his inquiries. Invaluable information! One night, after they had closed the countinghouse, Guillem remained seated at the table.

“I have things to do,” he told Arnau.

“What things?”

“I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

The next morning as the two men sat at the counting table before breakfast, the Moor said to Arnau: “Grau Puig is in desperate straits.” Was that another gleam in Arnau’s eye? “All the money changers and merchants I’ve talked to are agreed: his fortune has been swallowed up—”

“Perhaps it’s only malicious gossip,” Arnau said, interrupting him.

“Wait, look at this.” Guillem handed him his agents’ letters. “Here’s the proof. Grau Puig is in the hands of the Lombards.”

Arnau thought about what that meant: the Lombards were money changers and merchants, agents of the big banking concerns in Florence and Pisa. They were a tight-knit group who always looked after their own interests; their members dealt with one another or with their headquarters. They had a monopoly on the trade in luxury cloths: woolen fleeces, silks, brocades, Florentine taffeta, Pisan veils, and many other goods. The Lombards helped no one, and allowed others to have a part of their trade only so as not to be expelled from Catalonia. It was never a good idea to be in their hands. Arnau glanced at the letters, then dropped them on the table.

“What are you suggesting?”

“What do you want?”

“You know what I want: his ruin!”

“They say that Grau Puig is an old man now, and it is his wife and children who run his business affairs. Just imagine! His finances are precarious: if any venture failed, everything would come crashing down, and he would not be able to pay his debts. He would lose everything.”

“Buy up their debts,” said Arnau coldly, without moving a muscle. “Do it discreetly. I want to be their chief creditor, but I don’t want anyone to know. Make sure one of his ventures does fail... No, not one,” said Arnau, correcting himself, “all of them!” he said, thumping the table so hard even the heavy ledgers shook. “As many as you can,” he said more calmly. “I don’t want them to escape me.”

20 September 1355

The port of Barcelona

AT THE HEAD of his fleet, King Pedro the Third returned victorious to Barcelona after conquering Sardinia. The whole of the city rushed down to the beach to receive him. As everyone cheered, the king disembarked on a special wooden bridge built in front of Framenors convent. His retinue of nobles and soldiers also came ashore to a Barcelona willing and ready to celebrate his victory over the Sardinians.

Arnau and Guillem shut the countinghouse and went down to the beach along with all the others. Then Mar joined them to help celebrate in honor of the king: they sang and danced, listened to troubadours, ate sweetmeats, and then, as the sun was setting and the September night air began to grow cool, they returned home.

“Donaha!” shouted Mar as soon as Arnau opened the front door.

Still bubbling with emotion from the celebrations, the girl ran into the house, still shouting for Donaha. But when she reached the kitchen doorway, she suddenly came to a halt. Arnau and Guillem looked at each other. What was going on? Had something happened to Donaha?

They ran to Mar’s side.

“What is... ?” Arnau started to ask.

“Arnau, I don’t think all this shouting is the proper way to receive someone you haven’t seen in such a long time.” He heard a male voice that sounded familiar to him.

Arnau had been pushing Mar out of the way, but stood rooted to the spot when he heard these words.

“Joan!” he cried after a few moments’ pause.

Mar watched as he went into the kitchen, arms open wide, to greet the figure in black who had so frightened her. Guillem put his arm round her.

“It’s his brother,” he whispered in her ear.

Donaha was crouched in a corner of the kitchen, trying to hide.

“My God!” exclaimed Arnau, clasping Joan round the waist. “My God!” he went on repeating, as he lifted him clean into the air not once but several times.

Smiling broadly, Joan managed to struggle free from his grasp.

“You’ll break me in two!”

But Arnau was not listening to him.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, this time seizing him by the shoulders. “Let me look at you! You’ve changed!”

“It’s been thirteen years,” Joan tried to say, but Arnau would not listen.

“How long have you been in Barcelona?”

“I came...”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

With each question, Arnau shook his brother’s shoulders.

“Are you here to stay this time? Tell me you are!”

Guillem and Mar could not help smiling. The friar saw them: “That’s enough,” he said, pushing Arnau away. “Enough. You’ll squeeze me to death.”

Arnau stood back to survey him. Only the bright, lively eyes reminded him of the Joan who had left Barcelona. Now he was almost bald, thin, and hollow-cheeked ... and the black habit hanging from his shoulders only made him look worse. Joan was two years younger than him, but he looked much older.

“Haven’t you been eating? If the money I sent wasn’t enough—”

“No,” Joan butted in, “it was more than enough. Your money served to nourish ... my spirit. Books are very expensive, Arnau.”

“You should have asked for more.”

Joan waved away the suggestion, then sat down at the table opposite Guillem and Mar.

“Aren’t you going to present me to your goddaughter? I see she’s grown a lot since your last letter.”

Arnau signaled to Mar, and she came round the table to stand in front of Joan. Abashed by the stern look in the friar’s eyes, she kept her eyes on the floor. When he had finished his examination of her, Arnau presented Guillem.

“This is Guillem,” he said. “I’ve talked a lot about him in my letters.”

“Yes.” Joan made no effort to shake him by the hand, and Guillem was forced to withdraw his own outstretched arm. “Do you fulfill your Christian obligations?” he asked coldly.

“Yes...”

“Yes, Brother Joan,” Joan corrected him.

“Brother Joan,” Guillem repeated.

“And over there is Donaha,” Arnau said quickly.

Joan nodded without so much as looking at her.

“Good,” he said, turning to Mar and indicating with his eyes that she could sit down. “You’re Ramon’s daughter, aren’t you? Your father was a good man, a hardworking Christian who feared his Lord, like all bastaixos.” He looked at Arnau. “I’ve prayed a lot for him since Arnau told me of his death. How old are you, my child?”

Arnau ordered Donaha to serve their supper, then sat at the table. He realized that Guillem was still standing some way away, as though he did not dare sit down with the newcomer.

“Come and sit, Guillem,” he said. “This is your home too.”

Joan said nothing.

Nobody spoke during supper. Mar was unusually quiet, as if the presence of the friar had robbed her of all spontaneity. For his part, Joan ate frugally.

“Tell me, Joan,” Arnau said when they had finished eating, “what are you doing here? When did you come back?”

“I took advantage of the king’s return. I boarded a ship to Sardinia when I learned of his victory there, and came from the island to Barcelona.”

“Have you seen the king?”

“He would not receive me.”

Mar asked permission to leave the table. Guillem did the same. They both said good night to Brother Joan. After that, the two brothers talked until dawn; with the aid of a bottle of sweet wine, they made up for thirteen years apart.

37

TO THE RELIEF of everyone in Arnau’s family, Joan decided to move to Santa Caterina convent.

“That is the proper place for me,” he told his brother, “but I’ll come and visit you every day.”

Arnau, who had noticed how uncomfortable his goddaughter and Guillem had been during supper the previous evening, did not insist more than was strictly necessary.

“Do you know what he said to me?” he whispered to Guillem when they were getting up from their meal at midday. The Moor bent closer. “He asked what we have done to see that Mar is married.”

Without straightening up, Guillem looked across at the girl, who was helping Donaha clear the table. Find a husband for her? Why, she was only ... a woman! Guillem turned to Arnau. Neither of them had ever looked at her as they did now.

“What has become of our little girl?” Arnau whispered.

The two men gazed at her again: she was lively, beautiful, serene, and self-assured.

As she picked up the food bowls, Mar looked back at them.

Her body was already that of a woman: it was curved and shapely, and her breasts were beginning to show underneath her smock. She was fourteen.

Mar glanced at them again, and saw them staring openmouthed at her. This time instead of smiling she looked embarrassed, if only momentarily.

“What are you two staring at?” she bridled. “Don’t you have anything better to do?” she said, standing in front of them defiantly.

They both nodded as one. There was no doubt about it: she had turned into a woman without their even noticing it.

When they were safely in the countinghouse, Arnau said: “She’ll have a princess’s dowry. Money, clothes, a house ... no, a palace!” At this, he turned toward his companion. “What has happened about the Puig family?”

“That means she’ll leave us,” said Guillem, as if he had not heard Arnau’s question.

The two men sat for a while in silence.

“She’ll give us grandchildren,” Arnau said eventually.

“Don’t fool yourself. She’ll give her husband children. Besides, if we slaves cannot have children, we have even less right to grandchildren.”

“How often have I offered to free you?”

“What would I do with freedom? I’m fine as I am. But Mar ... a married woman! I don’t know why, but I’m already beginning to hate her husband, whoever he may be.”

“Me too,” Arnau admitted.

They turned toward each other, and both of them burst out laughing.

“But you didn’t answer my question,” said Arnau once they had recovered their composure. “What’s happened with the Puig family? I want that palace for Mar.”

“I sent instructions to Filippo Tescio in Pisa. If anyone can achieve what you are after, he’s the one.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That he was to pay pirates if necessary, but that the Puigs’ commissions were not to reach Barcelona, and those that had left the port should not arrive at their destinations. That he should steal the goods or set fire to them if need be, but that none of them should arrive.”

“Did he reply?”

“Filippo? No, he would never do that. He will not put anything in writing or entrust the affair to anyone else. If it got out... We have to wait for the end of the seagoing season. That will be in less than a month. If the Puig family’s commissions have not returned by then, they won’t be able to pay their debts. They’ll be ruined.”

“Have you bought up their credit notes?”

“You are Grau Puig’s main creditor.”

“They must be suffering by now,” Arnau muttered to himself.

“Haven’t you seen them?” Arnau turned sharply to him. “They’re down at the beach all the time. Before it was the baroness and one of her children; now that Genis is back from Sardinia, he has joined them. They spend hours scanning the horizon in search of a mast... and when a ship appears and comes into port but isn’t one of theirs, the baroness curses the waves. I thought you knew...”

“No, I didn’t know.” Arnau said nothing for a few moments. “Tell me when one of our ships is due in port.”

“SEVERAL SHIPS ARE coming in together,” Guillem told him one morning as they were walking back from the Consulate of the Sea.

“Is the Puig family there?”

“Of course. The baroness is so close to the water the waves are licking her shoes...” Guillem fell silent. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to ...”

Arnau smiled.

“Don’t worry,” he said, reassuring him. Then he went up to his bedroom, where he slowly put on his finest clothes, the ones Guillem had finally convinced him he should buy.

“A man in your position,” he had argued, “cannot appear badly dressed at the exchange or the consulate. That is what the king decrees, and so do your saints; Saint Vincent, for example ...”

Arnau made him be quiet, but listened to his advice. Now he donned a white sleeveless shirt made of the finest malines cloth and trimmed with fur, a red silk damascene doublet that came down to his knees, black hose, and black silk shoes. He fastened the doublet round his waist with a wide belt that had gold threads and was studded with pearls. Arnau completed his attire with a marvelous black cloak that Guillem had discovered in one of their ships’ expeditions beyond Dacia. It was lined with ermine and embroidered with gold and precious stones.

When he stepped into the countinghouse, Guillem nodded his approval. Mar was about to say something, but changed her mind. She watched as Arnau went out of the door: she ran to it and from the street outside saw him walk down to the beach, his cloak rippling in the sea breeze and the precious stones sparkling all round him.

“Where’s Arnau going?” she asked Guillem, coming back into the countinghouse and sitting opposite him in one of the clients’ chairs.

“To collect a debt.”

“It must be a very important one.”

“It is, Mar,” said Guillem, pursing his lips, “but this is only the first installment.”

Mar began to play with the ivory abacus. How often, hidden in the kitchen, had she watched as Arnau worked on it? His face was always serious, and he concentrated hard while he moved the counters and noted down figures in his books. Mar shivered the length of her spine.

“Is something wrong?” asked Guillem.

“No... no.”

Why not tell him? Guillem would understand, she said to herself. Except for Donaha, who could not help but smile whenever she saw Mar hiding in the kitchen to spy on Arnau, nobody else was aware of it. All the girls who met in the merchant Escales’s house talked about the same thing. Some of them were already betrothed, and liked nothing better than to praise the virtues of their husbands-to-be. Mar listened to them, but always avoided their questions to her. How could she mention Arnau? What if he found out? Arnau was thirty-four; she was only fourteen. But one of the girls was betrothed to someone even older than Arnau! Mar would have loved to be able to tell someone. Her friends could chatter about money, appearance, attractiveness, manliness, or generosity, but she knew that Arnau was better than any of them! Did not the bastaixos Mar occasionally met on the beach tell her that Arnau had been one of King Pedro’s bravest soldiers? Mar had discovered his old weapons in the bottom of a chest. When she was all alone she would pick them up and caress them, imagining Arnau surrounded by enemies and fighting them off valiantly as the bastaixos had told her he did.

Guillem studied the young girl. Mar sat there, the tip of her finger on one of the abacus counters, staring into space. Money? Bags and bags of it. Everyone in Barcelona knew that. And as for his kindness ...

“Are you sure nothing’s wrong?” Guillem asked again, startling her out of her daydream.

Mar blushed. Donaha always claimed that anybody could read her thoughts, that the name of Arnau was on her lips, her eyes, her whole face. What if Guillem knew this too?

“No... ,” she repeated, “nothing.”

Guillem replaced the abacus counters and Mar smiled at him... with a sad expression. What could be going through her mind? Perhaps Brother Joan was right; she was already of marriageable age, and here she was, shut up in a house with two men...

Mar took her finger off the abacus.

“Guillem.”

“Tell me.”

She fell silent.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” she said finally, getting up from her chair.

Guillem watched her as she left the room; it was hard to admit it, but the friar was probably right.

HE WENT UP to them. He had walked to the shore while the ships, three galleys and a carrack, entered the port. The carrack belonged to him. Isabel was dressed in black, and with one hand held on to her hat. Her stepsons, Josep and Genis, were standing beside her, with their backs to him. All three were peering desperately at the ships. “They won’t bring you any relief,” thought Arnau.

As he strode by in his best clothes, bastaixos, boatmen, and merchants had all fallen silent.

“Look at me, you harpy!” Arnau thought and waited, a few steps from the water’s edge. “Look at me! The last time you did...” The baroness turned slowly toward him; her sons did the same. Arnau took a deep breath. “The last time you did, my father was hanging above my head.”

The bastaixos and boatmen were muttering to one another.

“Is there something you need, Arnau?” asked one of the aldermen.

Arnau shook his head, not taking his eyes off Isabel’s face for a moment. The others moved away, and Arnau found himself next to the baroness and his cousins.

He breathed deeply once more. Defiantly, he stared Isabel in the eye for a few more seconds, then glanced at his cousins, and finally looked out to sea, smiling.

The baroness’s lips tightened. She too turned toward the sea, following Arnau’s gaze. When she looked toward him again, he was already striding away, the sunlight glinting off the precious stones on his cloak.

JOAN WAS STILL intent on seeing Mar married. He proposed several candidates: it was not difficult to find them. As soon as they heard the size of Mar’s dowry, nobles and merchants came running, but... how was the girl herself to be told? Joan offered to do it, but when Arnau told Guillem as much, the Moor was resolutely against the idea.

“You have to do it,” he said. “Not a monk she hardly knows.”

Ever since Guillem had insisted in this way, Arnau could not take his eyes off the girl. Did he know her? They had lived in the same house for years now, but it had been Guillem who always looked after her. All he had done had been to enjoy her being there, to hear her laughter and cheery banter. He had never talked to her about anything serious. Now, whenever he considered approaching her and asking her to go for a walk with him, on the beach or—why not?—to Santa Maria, whenever he thought of telling her they had to discuss a serious matter, he realized he knew little about her ... and hesitated. Where was the little girl he used to carry on his shoulders?

“I don’t want to marry any of them,” she told them. Arnau and Guillem looked at each other. Eventually, Arnau had persuaded the Moor they should bring the subject up together.

“You have to help me,” he had pleaded with him.

Mar’s eyes lit up when the two men mentioned marriage to her. They were sitting behind their accounting table, with her in front of them on the other side, as if this were another commercial transaction. But she shook her head at the mention of each of the five candidates that Brother Joan had suggested.

“But, Mar,” Guillem insisted, “you have to choose someone. Any girl would be proud to marry one of the names we have mentioned.”

Mar shook her head again.

“I don’t like them.”

“Well, you have to do something,” said Guillem, looking to Arnau for support.

Arnau studied the young girl. She was on the verge of tears. Her head was lowered, but he could tell from her trembling bottom lip and troubled breathing that tears were not far away. Why would a girl react in that way when they had just proposed such good matches for her? The silence lasted an eternity. Eventually, Mar raised her eyes slightly and peered at Arnau. Why make her suffer?

“We’ll go on looking until we find someone she does like,” he said to Guillem. “Do you agree, Mar?”

She nodded, got up from the chair, and left the room. The two men sat staring at each other.

Arnau sighed.

“And I thought the difficult part was going to be telling her!”

Guillem said nothing. He was still gazing at the kitchen doorway through which Mar had disappeared. What was going on? What was his little girl trying to hide? When she had heard the word “marriage” she smiled, and her eyes had lit up, but then afterward ...

“Just wait until you see how Joan reacts when he hears... ,” Arnau grumbled.

Guillem turned to him, but in the end did not reply. What did it matter what the friar thought?

“You’re right. We’d best go on looking.”

ARNAU TURNED TOWARD Joan.

“Please,” he said, “this isn’t the moment.”

They had gone into Santa Maria to calm down. The news was not good, but here, with his Virgin, the constant sounds of the stonemasons, and the smiles of all the workmen, Arnau felt at ease. Joan, though, had found him and would not let him be: it was Mar here, Mar there, Mar everywhere. After all, what business was it of his?

“What reasons can she have against marriage?” Joan insisted.

“This isn’t the moment, Joan,” Arnau said again.

“Why not?”

“Because we are facing another war.” The friar looked startled. “Didn’t you know? King Pedro the Cruel of Castille has just declared war on us.”

“Why?”

Arnau shook his head.

“Because he’s been wanting to do so for some time now,” he growled, raising his arms. “The excuse was that our admiral, Francesc de Perellos, captured two Genoese boats carrying olive oil off the coast of Sanlúcar. The Castillian king demanded they be released, and when our admiral paid no attention, he declared war on us. That man is dangerous,” muttered Arnau. “I understand that he has earned his nickname: he is spiteful and vengeful. Do you realize what this means, Joan? We are at war with Genoa and Castille at the same time. Does it seem like a good moment to be bothering ourselves with getting the girl married?” Joan hesitated. They were standing beneath the keystone for the nave’s third arch, surrounded by scaffolding erected for the construction of the ribs. “Do you remember?” asked Arnau, pointing up at the keystone. Joan looked up and nodded. They had been children when the first stone had been put in place! Arnau waited a moment and then added: “Catalonia is not going to be able to finance this. We’re still paying for the campaign against Sardinia, and now we have to fight on another front.”

“I thought you merchants were in favor of conquest.”

“We wouldn’t open any new trade routes in Castille. No, it’s a difficult situation, Joan. Guillem was right.” At the mention of the Moor’s name, Joan looked askance. “We have only just conquered Sardinia and the Corsicans have risen against us: they did so as soon as the king left the island. We are at war with two powers, and the king’s coffers are empty; even the city councillors seem to have gone mad!”

They began to walk toward the high altar.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that there is no money available in Barcelona. The king is pressing ahead with his building schemes: the royal dockyards and the new city wall—”

“But both of them are needed,” said Joan, interrupting him.

“The dockyards, possibly, but after the plague there is no need for the wall.”

“Well, then?”

“Well, the king is still exhausting his reserves. He has obliged all the surrounding villages to contribute to the new wall, because he says one day they will take refuge inside it. He has also created a new tax for it: the fortieth part of all inheritances is to be set aside for its construction. As for the dockyards—all the fines that the consulates collect are poured into building them. And now here we are with another war.”

“Barcelona is rich.”

“Not any longer, Joan, that’s the problem. The more money the city gave him, the more privileges the king granted it. As a consequence, the councillors have taken on so much that they cannot finance everything. They’ve increased the taxes on meat and wine. Did you know that part of the city’s budget went to keeping those prices down?” Joan shook his head. “It used to be half of the city’s budget. Instead of that, now they’ve brought in new taxes. The city’s debts will bring ruin to us all, Joan—you mark my words.”

The two men stood lost in thought in front of the high altar. When they finally left the church, Joan resumed the attack.

“What about Mar?”

“She will do whatever she wants, Joan.”

“But...”

“No buts about it. That is my decision.”

“KNOCK,” ARNAU SAID to him.

Guillem knocked with the heavy door knocker. The sound echoed along the deserted street. Nobody came to open.

“Knock again.”

Guillem knocked again, not once but seven, eight times. At the ninth, the peephole opened.

“What’s the matter?” the eyes on the other side of the door asked. “What’s all this fuss? Who are you?”

Clinging to Arnau’s arm, Mar could feel him grow tense.

“Open up!” Arnau commanded.

“In whose name?”

“Arnau Estanyol,” Guillem said solemnly, “owner of this building and of everything there is in it, including yourself if you are a slave.”

“Arnau Estanyol, the owner of this building...” Guillem’s words resounded in Arnau’s ears. How long had it been? Twenty years? Twenty-two? Behind the spyhole, the eyes hesitated.

“Open up!” Guillem insisted.

Arnau looked up at the heavens. He was thinking of his father.

“What... ?” the girl began to ask.

“Nothing, nothing,” Arnau said with a smile, just as one of the doors that allowed people on foot into the palace opened in the huge double gate.

Guillem stood back to let Arnau past.

“Both gates, Guillem. I want them to open both gates wide.”

Guillem went inside, and Arnau and Mar could hear him giving orders.

“Can you see me, Father? Do you remember? This was where they gave you that bag of money that led to your downfall. What else could you have done?” Arnau recalled the rising in Plaza del Blat; people shouting, his father one of them, all of them pleading to be given grain! Arnau could feel a lump rise in his throat.

The gates opened and Arnau went in.

Several slaves were standing in the courtyard. On the right was the staircase up to the principal rooms. Arnau did not look up at them, but Mar had no hesitation, and could see shadows moving behind the windows. The stables were in front of them: the grooms were lined up outside. “My God!” Arnau’s whole body shook. He leaned on Mar, and she glanced at him.

“Here you are,” said Guillem to Arnau, handing him a rolled-up parchment.

Arnau did not take it. He knew what was in it. He had learned its contents by heart ever since Guillem had shown it to him the previous day. It was an inventory of all Grau Puig’s possessions that the magistrate had awarded Arnau in payment of his debts: the palace, the slaves—Arnau looked in vain for the name of Estranya on the list—together with several properties outside Barcelona, among which was a small house in Navarcles in which he decided to allow the Puig family to live. Some jewels; two pairs of horses with all their harnesses; a carriage; suits and other clothing; pots, pans, and crockery; carpets and furniture—everything in the palace was detailed on this rolled-up parchment that Arnau had read time and again the previous evening.

He glanced once more at the door to the stables, then surveyed all the cobbled courtyard ... until his eyes alighted on the foot of the staircase.

“Shall we go up?” asked Guillem.

“Yes. Take me to your mas—to Grau Puig,” Arnau corrected himself.

The slave led them upstairs. Mar and Guillem looked all around them; Arnau stared straight ahead. The slave led them to the main chamber.

“Announce me,” Arnau said to Guillem before the doors were opened.

“Arnau Estanyol!” his friend cried out, flinging them open.

Arnau did not remember what this main chamber was like. As a young boy he had not even looked when he had crossed it... on his knees. Nor did he pay much attention this time. Isabel was seated in a chair next to one of the windows. Josep and Genis were standing on either side of her. The former, like his sister, Margarida, was married now. Genis was still unmarried. Arnau looked for Josep’s family, but could not see them. In another chair sat Grau Puig, a drooling old man.

Isabel confronted him, eyes blazing.

Arnau stood in the middle of the room, next to a hardwood dining table that was twice as long as the one in his countinghouse. Mar and Guillem were both behind him. The family slaves had clustered in the doorway.

Arnau spoke in a loud enough voice for everyone in the room to hear.

“Guillem, those shoes are mine,” he said, pointing to Isabel’s feet. “Get her to take them off.”

“Yes, Master.”

Mar was taken aback, and turned toward the Moor. Master? She knew Guillem was a slave, but had never before heard him speak to Arnau in this way.

Guillem signaled to two of the slaves standing in the doorway, and the three of them walked over to Isabel. The baroness still sat there haughtily, challenging Arnau with her look.

One of the slaves knelt down, but before he could touch her, Isabel took off her own shoes and let them fall to the floor. She stared straight at Arnau.

“I want you to gather up all the shoes in the house and burn them out in the yard,” said Arnau.

“Yes, Master,” said Guillem once more.

The baroness was still gazing at him defiantly.

“Those chairs,” said Arnau, pointing to the ones she and Grau Puig were sitting in. “Take them out of here.”

“Yes, Master.”

Grau’s children lifted him out of his chair. The baroness stood up before the slaves could take the chair from under her and stack it with the others in a corner of the chamber.

But she was still defying him.

“That robe is mine too.”

Did he see her tremble?

“You don’t mean to say... ?” spluttered Genis Puig, still carrying his father.

“That robe is mine,” Arnau insisted, staring straight at Isabel.

Was she trembling?

“Mother,” said Josep, “go and change.”

Yes, she was trembling.

“Guillem,” shouted Arnau.

“Mother, please.”

Guillem went up to the baroness.

She was trembling!

“Mother!”

“What do you want me to put on?” howled Isabel to her stepson. Then she turned again to face Arnau. Her whole body shook. “Do you really want me to take my robe off?” her eyes asked him.

Arnau frowned sternly, and slowly, very slowly, Isabel lowered her gaze to the floor. She was sobbing with rage.

Arnau waved to Guillem to leave her. For a few moments, the only sound in the main chamber of the palace was of her sobbing.

“By tonight,” Arnau said at length to Guillem, “I want this building empty. Tell them they may go back to Navarcles, which they should never have left.” Josep and Genis stared at him; Isabel was still weeping. “I’m not interested in those lands. Give them some of the slaves’ clothes, but no footwear. Burn it all. Sell everything else and close this house up.”

Arnau turned round and saw Mar, her face flushed. He had forgotten all about her. He took her by the arm and they walked out of the room.

“You can close the gates now,” he told the old man who had let them into the palace.

The two of them walked in silence to his countinghouse, but before they went in, Arnau came to a halt.

“Shall we go for a walk on the beach?”

Mar nodded.

“Has your debt been repaid now?” she asked him when they could see the sea in front of them.

They walked on a few steps.

“It never will be, Mar,” she heard him murmur. “Never.”

38

9 June 1359

Barcelona

ARNAU WAS WORKING in the countinghouse. The seagoing season was at its height. Business was thriving, and Arnau had become one of the richest men in all Barcelona. Even so, he still lived in the small house on the corner of Canvis Vells and Canvis Nous, together with Guillem, Mar, and Donaha. Arnau would not heed Guillem’s advice and move to the Puig family palace, which had been shut for four years. Mar was proving to be quite as stubborn as Arnau, and had still not agreed to be married.

“Why do you want to push me away from you?” she said to him one day, her eyes bathed in tears.

“I ... ,” Arnau stammered, “I don’t want to push you away from me!”

She went on weeping, and leaned against his shoulder.

“Don’t worry,” Arnau reassured her, stroking her head. “I’ll never force you to do anything you don’t want to.”

So Mar went on living with them.

But on the morning of June 9, a church bell suddenly began to ring. Arnau stopped what he was doing. A moment later, another bell began to sound, and soon afterward many more joined in.

“Via fora,” Arnau said to himself.

He went out into the street. At Santa Maria, the workmen were quickly swarming down the scaffolding; masons and laborers emerged from the main doorway. In the streets all around, people were running and shouting, “Via fora!”

Arnau met Guillem, who was walking quickly toward the house, a worried look on his face.

“War!” Guillem shouted.

“They’re calling out the host,” said Arnau.

“No ... no.” Guillem stopped to get his breath back. “It’s not the city host. It’s Barcelona and all the towns and villages for two leagues around.”

That meant the hosts from San Boi and Badalona. From San Andreu and Sarrià; from Provencana, San Feliu, San Genis, Cornellà, San Just Desvern, San Joan Despí, Sants, Santa Coloma, Esplugues, Vallvidrera, San Martí, San Adrià, San Gervasi, San Joan d’Horta ... the ringing of bells could be heard all round the city.

“The king has invoked the usatge princeps namque,” explained Guillem. “It’s not the city going to war; it’s the king! We’re at war! We’re being attacked. King Pedro of Castille has launched an attack ...”

“He’s attacking Barcelona?”

“Yes. Barcelona.”

The two men ran into their house.

Shortly afterward, they came out again. Arnau was carrying the weapons he had used when he served under Eiximèn d’Esparca. They ran down Calle de la Mar toward Plaza del Blat, but soon realized that the crowd shouting, “Via fora,” was headed in the opposite direction.

“What is going on?” Arnau asked one of the men, grabbing him by the arm as he sped past.

“To the beach!” the man shouted, struggling free of him. “Down to the beach!”

“An attack from the sea?” Arnau and Guillem asked themselves, then joined the hundreds of others running down to the shore.

By the time they arrived, it seemed as though the whole of Barcelona was there, gazing out at the horizon and waving their crossbows in the air. The bells were still ringing loud in their ears. The shouts of “Via fora” gradually subsided, and everyone stood quietly on the sand.

Guillem raised a hand to his eyes to protect them from the fierce June sun, and began to count the ships he could see: one, two, three, four ...

The sea was dead calm.

“They’ll destroy us,” Arnau heard someone say behind him.

“They’ll lay waste to Barcelona.”

“What can we do against an army?”

Twenty-seven, twenty-eight... Guillem was still counting.

“They’ll destroy us,” Arnau said to himself. How often had he discussed this with other merchants and traders? Barcelona was defenseless from the sea. From Santa Clara to Framenors, it was open to the Mediterranean. There were no defenses at all! If a fleet sailed into its port...

“Thirty-nine, forty. Forty ships!” exclaimed Guillem.