Cathedral of the Sea

“I’D LIKE TO see my brother,” Joan abruptly asked Nicolau Eimerich as soon as Joan entered the bishop’s palace.

The grand inquisitor’s eyes narrowed. “Your duty is to make him confess and repent.”

“What is he accused of?”

Nicolau Eimerich stiffened behind the table where he had received Joan.

“You’re asking me to tell you what he is accused of? You are an accomplished inquisitor—but you wouldn’t be trying to help your brother, would you?”

Joan looked at the floor.

“All I can tell you is that it is very serious. I’ll permit you to see him provided you confirm that the reason for your visits is to obtain Arnau’s confession.”

Ten lashes! Fifteen, twenty-five ... How often had he himself given that command in the past few years? “Until he confesses!” he would instruct the captain accompanying him. And now ... now he was being asked to obtain his own brother’s confession. How was he supposed to do that? Joan’s only reply was to spread his hands in a mute appeal.

“It’s your duty,” Eimerich reminded him.

“He’s my brother. He’s all I have ...”

“You have the Church. You have all of us, your brothers in Christ.” The grand inquisitor fell silent for a while. “Brother Joan, I was waiting for you to arrive. If you don’t accept the terms, I’ll have to take charge of him myself.”

WHEN THE STENCH from the dungeons in the bishop’s palace hit him, Joan could not repress a grimace of distaste. As he was being led down the dark passageway to where Arnau was imprisoned, he could hear water dripping from the walls and rats scuttling out of the way. He felt one run between his legs. He shuddered, as he had done when he heard Nicolau Eimerich’s threat: “I’ll have to take charge of him myself.” What could Arnau have done? How was he going to tell him that he, his own brother, had promised to ... ?

The jailer opened the door to the dungeon. A vast, evil-smelling chamber appeared before Joan. Shadowy figures moved in the darkness, and the clink of the chains that bound them grated on Joan’s ears. The Dominican friar could feel his stomach reacting against the foul conditions and tasted bile in his mouth. “Over there,” said the jailer, pointing to a dark shape hunched in a corner. He left without waiting for any answer. The sound of the door slamming behind him made Joan start. He stood close to the door, searching in the gloom: the only light came in through a small window high up on the outer wall. As soon as the jailer had left, he heard the sounds of chains once more. What seemed like a dozen shadows shifted in front of him. Did that mean they were relieved because it was not them the jailer had come for, or were they desperate for the same reason? Joan had no idea, unable to interpret the groans and laments that surrounded him. He went up to the shadowy bundle that he thought the jailer had pointed to, but when he knelt in front of the figure, the scarred, toothless face of an old woman peered up at him.

He fell backward; the old crone stared at him for a few moments, then hastened to conceal her misery in the darkness once more.

“Arnau?” whispered Joan, still spread-eagled on the floor. Then, when he got no reply, he repeated his brother’s name out loud.

“Joan?”

Joan hastened in the direction the voice had come from. He knelt before another shadowy figure, then took his brother’s head in his hands and pulled him toward him.

“Holy Mother of God! What... What have they done to you? How are you?” Joan felt Arnau’s head: the hair was matted; his cheekbones were beginning to stand out from the gaunt cheeks. “Don’t they feed you?”

“Yes,” Arnau replied. “A crust of bread and water.”

When Joan’s fingers came up against the shackles round his brother’s ankles, he quickly drew his hands away.

“Could you do something for me?” asked Arnau. Joan said nothing. “You’re one of them. You’ve always told me the grand inquisitor holds you in great esteem. This is unbearable, Joan. I don’t know how many days I’ve been in here. I was waiting for you...”

“I came as soon as I could.”

“Have you spoken to the grand inquisitor?”

“Yes.” Despite the darkness, Joan tried to hide his features. The two of them fell silent.

“And?” asked Arnau eventually.

“What have you done, Arnau?”

Arnau’s hand tightened on Joan’s arm. “How could you think that ... ?”

“I need to know, Arnau. If I’m to help you, I need to know what they are accusing you of. You must be aware that they never say what the accusation is. Nicolau refused to tell me.”

“So, what did you talk about?”

“Nothing,” Joan said. “I didn’t want to talk about anything with him until I had seen you. I need to know what sort of accusation they are making if I am to convince Nicolau.”

“Go and ask Eleonor.” Arnau remembered how he had seen his wife pointing at him through the flames licking around the body of an innocent man. “Hasdai is dead,” he said.

“Eleonor?” queried Joan.

“Does that surprise you?”

Joan lost his balance, and leaned on Arnau for support.

“What’s the matter, Joan?” his brother asked, trying to steady him.

“It’s this place... and seeing you like this... I feel faint.”

“Get out of here then,” Arnau encouraged him. “You’ll be more use to me on the outside than you will be trying to comfort me in here.”

Joan stood up. His legs were weak. “Yes, I think you’re right.”

Joan called the jailer and left the dungeon. He followed the fat man back up the passageway. He had a few coins on him.

“Take these,” he said. The jailer put them in his purse without a word. “Tomorrow there’ll be more if you treat my brother properly.” The only sound was from rats scurrying along the passage. “Did you hear me?” he insisted. This time the reply was a deep growl that at least silenced the rats.

JOAN NEEDED MONEY. As soon as he left the bishop’s palace, he headed for Arnau’s exchange table. When he arrived, he saw a crowd outside the small building on the corner of Canvis Vells and Canvis Nous from which Arnau had conducted his business affairs. Joan drew back.

“That’s his brother!” one of the crowd shouted.

Several of them rushed up to him. Joan was about to turn tail, but stopped when he saw that they had come to a halt a few steps from him. Of course they would not attack a Dominican. He stood as upright as possible and carried on walking.

“What’s happened to your brother, Friar?” one of the men asked as he passed by.

Joan confronted a man who was a good head taller than him.

“My name is Brother Joan. I’m an inquisitor with the Holy Office,” he said, raising his voice as he explained his position. “When you speak to me, call me ‘my lord inquisitor.’”

Joan looked up, staring the man straight in the eye. “What sins do you have to confess?” he inquired silently. The man took a couple of steps backward. Joan strode on toward the exchange, the crowd giving way before him.

“I am Brother Joan, an inquisitor from the Holy Office!” he shouted outside the closed doors of the building.

Three of Arnau’s assistants allowed him in. The room inside was in turmoil : account books were strewn all over the rumpled red cloth covering his brother’s money table. If Arnau could have seen it ...

“I need money,” he told them.

The three men looked at him in disbelief.

“So do we,” responded the eldest, a man by the name of Remigi who had taken over from Guillem.

“What’s that?”

“We have hardly any money left, Brother Joan.” Remigi opened several money boxes on the table. “Look, there’s nothing in them.”

“Doesn’t my brother have money?”

“Not in cash. Why do you think there are all those people outside? They want their money. They’ve been besieging us for days now. Arnau is still a very rich man,” he said, trying to reassure the friar, “but it’s all invested—in loans, commissions, in business deals...”

“Can’t you demand repayment of the loans?”

“The main debtor is the king, and you know that His Majesty’s coffers are...”

“Is there no one who owes Arnau money?”

“Yes, lots of people do, but either they are loans that have not come to term, or ones that have, but... You know Arnau lent money to many people who have nothing. They can’t pay him back. Even so, when they heard about his situation, many of them came and paid back part of what they owed him, what little they could afford. But that is no more than a gesture. We cannot hope to cover all the deposits that way.”

Joan turned back and pointed to the door. “So how is it that they can demand their money?”

“In fact, they don’t have the right to. They all deposited their funds for Arnau to use on their behalf, but money is slippery, and the Inquisition...”

Joan gestured for him to forget that he was also a member of the Holy Office. The jailer’s growl echoed in his ears.

“I need money,” he repeated out loud.

“I’ve already told you, there isn’t any,” Remigi protested.

“But I need some,” Joan insisted. “Arnau needs it.”

“Arnau needs it, and above all,” thought Joan, turning to look at the door again, “he needs breathing space. This scandal can only do him harm. People will think he is ruined, and then no one will want to know him ... We’ll need help.”

“Is there nothing we can do to calm those people down? Is there nothing we can sell?”

“We could pass on some commissions. We could put the creditors together in them, instead of Arnau,” said Remigi. “But to do that, we would need his authority.”

“Is mine enough?”

The official stared at him.

“It has to be done, Remigi.”

“I suppose you’re right,” the other man said after a few moments’ thought. “In fact, we would not be losing money. We would simply be switching things around. They could keep some investments. We would still have others. If Arnau were not involved, that would calm them down ... but you will have to give me your written authority.”

Remigi quickly prepared a document. Joan signed it. “Gather some money by first thing tomorrow,” he said as he signed. “It’s cash we need,” he insisted when the assistant looked at him hesitantly. “Sell something off cheaply if necessary, but we must have money.”

As soon as Joan had left the exchange house and calmed down the creditors outside once more, Remigi began to redistribute the investments. That same afternoon, the last ship leaving Barcelona carried with it instructions for Arnau’s agents all over the Mediterranean. Remigi acted swiftly; by the next day, the satisfied creditors were spreading the news that Arnau’s business affairs were sound.

48

FOR THE FIRST time in almost a week, Arnau drank fresh water and ate something other than a crust of bread. The jailer forced him to his feet by kicking him, and then sluiced a bucket of water on the floor. “Better water than excrement,” thought Arnau. For a few seconds, all that could be heard was the water splashing on the stones, and the obese jailer’s labored breathing. Even the old woman who had given herself up to death and kept her face buried in her filthy rags looked up at Arnau.

“Leave the bucket,” the bastaix ordered the jailer as he was about to leave.

Arnau had seen him mistreat prisoners just because they had dared to meet his gaze. Now the jailer lunged at him with outstretched arms, but when he saw Arnau defying him, he pulled away just before making contact. He spat, and threw the bucket on the ground. Before he shut the door behind him, he kicked at one of the shadows looking on.

After the ground had absorbed the water, Arnau sat down again. He could hear a church bell ringing. That and the feeble rays of sun that managed to penetrate the filthy window that was at street level outside were his only links to the world. Arnau raised his eyes to the tiny window and strained to hear more. Santa Maria was bathed in light, but did not yet have any bells, and yet the sound of chisels on stone, the hammering on timbers, and the workmen’s calls on the scaffolding could be heard some distance from the church. Whenever the distant echo of those sounds reached the dungeons, that and the sunlight transported Arnau’s spirit to accompany all those working so devotedly for the Virgin of the Sea. Arnau felt once more the weight of that first block of stone he had carried to Santa Maria. How long ago had that been? How things had changed! He had been little more than a boy, a boy who’d found in the Virgin the mother he had never known...

At least, thought Arnau, he had managed to save Raquel from the terrible fate that seemed to await her. As soon as he had seen Eleonor and Margarida pointing to them, Arnau had made sure Raquel and her family fled the Jewish quarter. Not even he knew where they had gone ...

“I want you to go and look for Mar,” he told Joan on his next visit.

Still two paces away from his brother, the friar tensed.

“Did you hear me, Joan?” Arnau tried to approach him, but the chains cut into his legs. Joan had not moved. “Joan, did you hear me?”

“Yes... yes... I heard you.” Joan went up to his brother and embraced him. “But... ,” he started to say.

“I have to see her, Joan.” He gripped him by the shoulders and gently shook him. “I don’t want to die without speaking to her again...”

“My God! Don’t say that... !”

“Yes, Joan. I might well die in here, all alone, with only a dozen helpless unfortunates as witness. I don’t want to perish without having had the chance to see Mar. It’s something ...”

“What do you want to say to her? What can be that important?”

“Her forgiveness, Joan, I need her forgiveness.” Joan tried to struggle free from his brother’s hands, but Arnau would not let him. “You know me. You are a man of God. You know I’ve never done anyone any harm, apart from that... child.”

Joan succeeded in freeing his shoulders ... and fell on his knees before his brother. “It wasn’t—” he began to say.

“You’re the only one I have, Joan,” Arnau interrupted him. He also sank to his knees. “You have to help me. You’ve never let me down. You can’t do so now. You’re all I have, Joan!”

Joan said nothing.

“What about her husband?” was all he could think of to say. “He might not allow ...”

“He’s dead,” Arnau replied. “I found that out when he ceased making payments on a cheap loan I had offered him. He died fighting for the king, in the defense of Calatayud.”

“But—” Joan tried to say again.

“Joan ... I’m tied to my wife by an oath that prevents me from being with Mar as long as she lives... But I must see her. I have to tell her my feelings, even though we can’t be together ...” Arnau slowly recovered his composure. There was another favor he wanted to ask his brother. “Would you go and see my exchange office... I want to know how things are going.”

Joan gave a sigh. That very morning, when he had gone to his brother’s exchange, Remigi had handed him a bag of money.

“It wasn’t a good deal,” he told Joan.

Nothing was a good deal. When he left Arnau after promising to do his best to find Mar, Joan handed over money to the jailer at the door to the dungeon.

“He asked for a bucket.”

How much was a bucket worth to Arnau...? Joan gave the jailer another coin.

“I want that bucket cleaned constantly.” The jailer stuffed the coins in his purse and set off up the passageway. “One of the prisoners in there is dead,” added Joan.

The jailer merely shrugged.

JOAN DID NOT even go out of the bishop’s palace. After leaving the dungeons, he went in search of Nicolau Eimerich. He knew all the palace corridors. How often in his younger days had he walked down them, proud of his responsibilities? Now other young men hastened along, neat and tidy priests who openly stared at him in astonishment.

“Has he confessed?”

Joan had promised Arnau he would try to find Mar.

“Has he confessed?” repeated the grand inquisitor.

Joan had spent a sleepless night preparing for this conversation, but nothing he had thought of was any use now.

“If he did, what penalty... ?”

“I have already told you it is a very serious matter.”

“My brother is very rich.” Joan met Nicolau Eimerich’s gaze.

“Are you, an inquisitor, trying to buy the Holy Office?”

“Fines are permitted as payment for lesser offenses. I am sure that if you offered Arnau a fine ...”

“As you well know, that depends on how serious the offense is. The accusation against him—”

“Eleonor has no right to accuse him of anything,” Joan interrupted.

The grand inquisitor got up from his seat and confronted Joan, pressing his hands on the table.

“So,” he said, raising his voice, “both of you know it was the king’s ward who made the accusation. His own wife, the king’s ward! How could you imagine she would do such a thing if Arnau had nothing to hide? What man mistrusts his wife? Why not a business rival, or one of his assistants, or even a neighbor? How many people has Arnau sentenced as consul of the sea? Why couldn’t it have been one of them? Answer me, Brother Joan: why the baroness? What sins is your brother hiding for him to be so sure it was her?”

Joan shrank back in his seat. How often had he used the same tactic? Plucking words from the air in order to ... But how did Arnau know it had been Eleonor? Could it be that he had really... ?

“It wasn’t Arnau who put the blame on his wife,” Joan lied. “It was me.”

Nicolau Eimerich raised his hands to the heavens. “And how do you know it was her, Brother Joan?”

“She hates him ... No!” he tried to correct himself, but Nicolau was already pouncing on his words.

“Why would she do that?” cried the inquisitor. “Why would the king’s ward hate her husband? Why would a good, God-fearing Christian wife come to hate her husband? What kind of wrong can her husband have done her to awaken such hatred? Women were born to serve men; that is the law on earth and in heaven. Men beat women, but the women do not hate them for it; men keep women shut up, and are not hated for that either. Women work for their husbands, and fornicate with them when the man so wishes. They have to look after them and submit to them—but none of that creates hatred. So what precisely do you know, Brother Joan?”

Joan clenched his teeth. He should not say anything more. He felt defeated.

“You are an inquisitor. I demand you tell me all you know,” shouted Nicolau.

Joan still said nothing.

“You are forbidden to protect sin. Whoever is silent about a sin is more guilty than a person who commits one.”

In his mind’s eye, Joan saw an endless number of village squares, with the inhabitants shrinking in the face of his diatribes.

“Brother Joan”—Nicolau spat the words as though they were distasteful, pointing to him across the table—“I want his confession by tomorrow. And pray that I don’t decide to judge you as well. Oh, and Brother Joan!” he added as the friar was about to leave the room. “Make sure you change your habit. I have already received complaints. And from what I can see ...”

Nicolau waved disdainfully at Joan’s habit. As he left the chamber, glancing down at the filthy, threadbare folds of his tunic, Joan almost bumped into two men who were waiting in the grand inquisitor’s antechamber. With them were three armed men who stood guard over two women in chains: an old woman and a younger one, whose face ...

“What are you doing still here, Brother Joan?” asked Nicolau Eimerich, coming to the door to receive his visitors.

Joan delayed no longer, but scurried off down the corridor.

JAUME DE BELLERA and Genis Puig went into Nicolau Eimerich’s office. After casting a rapid glance at Francesca and Aledis, Eimerich left them in the antechamber.

“We have heard,” said the lord of Bellera once they had presented themselves and taken seats, “that you have arrested Arnau Estanyol.”

Genis Puig fiddled nervously with his hands in his lap.

“Yes,” said Nicolau curtly, “it’s public knowledge.”

“What is he accused of?” Genis Puig interjected. The nobleman at his side glared at him. “Don’t speak; don’t say a word until the inquisitor asks you to,” he had warned him many times.

Nicolau turned to Genis. “Don’t you know that is a secret?”

“I beg you to forgive my friend,” Jaume de Bellera quickly said, “but you will soon see why we are so interested. We have heard that there is an accusation against Arnau Estanyol, and we wish to back it up.”

The grand inquisitor straightened in his seat. A ward of the king, three priests from Santa Maria who had heard Estanyol blaspheme in the church itself, arguing out loud with his wife. Now a nobleman and a knight. Few accusations could have more convincing witnesses. He nodded to the two men to continue.

Jaume de Bellera narrowed his eyes at Genis Puig in warning, then began the speech he had so often rehearsed.

“We think that Arnau Estanyol is the incarnation of the Devil.” Nicolau did not move. “He is the son of a murderer and a witch. His father, Bernat Estanyol, killed a groom in Bellera castle and then fled with his son, Arnau, whom my father was keeping locked up because he knew what he was capable of. It was Bernat Estanyol who led the rising in Plaza del Blat during the first bad year we had: do you remember it? He was executed on the same spot...”

“And his son set fire to his body,” Genis Puig could not stop himself from exclaiming.

Nicolau gave a start. Jaume de Bellera gave his companion another warning look.

“He set fire to the body?” asked Nicolau.

“Yes, yes, I saw it myself,” lied Genis Puig, recalling what his mother had told him.

“Did you report him to the authorities then?”

“I ...” The lord of Bellera tried to intervene, but Nicolau waved to him not to interrupt. “I... was only a child. I was afraid he might do the same to me.”

Nicolau raised his hand to his chin to hide a sly smile. Then he motioned for the lord of Bellera to continue.

“His mother, that old woman outside, is a witch. Nowadays she is the mistress of a bawdy house, but she was the one who suckled me, and bewitched me with milk intended for her son.” When he heard this from the nobleman, Nicolau’s eyes opened wide. The lord of Navarcles realized why. “Don’t worry,” he said quickly, “as soon as the sickness became apparent, my father brought me to the lord bishop. I am the son of Llorenç and Caterina de Bellera, the lords of Navarcles. You can verify that no one in my family has ever had the Devil’s sickness. It can only have been that accursed milk!”

“You say she is a harlot now?”

“Yes, that too you can verify. She calls herself Francesca.”

“And the other woman?”

“She wanted to accompany her.”

“Is she another witch?”

“That is for you to decide.”

Nicolau thought for a few moments.

“Is there anything more?” he asked.

“Yes,” Genis Puig intervened. “Arnau killed my brother Guiamon when he refused to take part in his diabolic rites. He tried to drown him one night on the beach ... My brother died soon afterward.”

Nicolau stared once more at the knight.

“My sister, Margarida, can confirm it. She was there. She grew frightened and tried to run away when Arnau began to summon the Devil. She can confirm all this for you.”

“And you did not report Arnau then either?”

“I’ve only recently learned about it, when I told my sister what I was thinking of doing. She is still terrified that Arnau might harm her; she has lived with that fear for years.”

“These are very serious accusations.”

“They are nothing more than Arnau Estanyol deserves,” said the lord of Bellera. “You well know that this man has spent a lifetime undermining authority. On his lands, contrary to his spouse’s wishes, he abolished customary practices. Here in Barcelona he lends money to the poor, and as consul of the sea he is well-known for his habit of giving judgments in favor of the common people.” Nicolau Eimerich listened attentively. “Throughout his life he has sought to undermine the principles on which our social harmony is based. God created the peasants to work the land under the tutelage of their feudal lords. Even the Church, in order not to lose them, has forbidden its serfs to take the habit ...”

Nicolau intervened. “In New Catalonia many of those customary practices no longer exist.”

Genis Puig was glancing anxiously at each of them in turn.

“That is precisely what I am trying to say.” The lord of Bellera chopped the air with his hands. “In our new Catalonia there are no abuses... thanks to our prince, thanks to the Church. We have to populate the lands won from the infidel, and the only way to do that is by attracting new people. That is what our prince has decided. But Arnau is nothing more than the prince ... of darkness.”

When he saw the grand inquisitor nod imperceptibly at these words, Genis Puig smiled broadly.

“He lends money to the poor,” the nobleman went on, “money he knows he is never likely to recover. God created the rich ... and the poor. It is not right that the poor should have money and marry off their daughters as though they were rich; that is against the will of our Lord. What are those poor people going to think of you churchmen, or of we nobles? Are we not following the precepts of the Church when we treat the poor as they should be treated? Arnau is a devil, the son of devils. Everything he does is designed to prepare for the coming of the Devil through the rebellion of the common people. I beg you to think on all this.”

Nicolau Eimerich thought about what he had heard. He called in his scribe to note down all the accusations that the lord of Bellera and Genis Puig had made. He sent for Margarida Puig and ordered that Francesca be imprisoned.

“What about the other woman?” he asked. “Is she accused of anything?” The two men hesitated. “In that case, let her be set free.”

Francesca was sent to the huge palace dungeon. She was chained to the wall at the opposite end from Arnau. Aledis was thrown out onto the street.

When he had finished organizing everything, Nicolau Eimerich slumped in his chair. Blaspheming in the temple of our Lord; having sexual congress with a Jewess, befriending Jews; committing murder; engaging in diabolic practices, going against the precepts of the Church—and all of this backed up by priests, nobles, knights... and by the king’s ward. The grand inquisitor leaned back in his chair and smiled to himself.

“How rich is your brother, Joan? Stupid man! What fine are you talking about, when all that money will fall into the hands of the Inquisition anyway as soon as your brother is condemned to die?”

ALEDIS STUMBLED AS the soldiers pushed her into the street outside the bishop’s palace. When she regained her balance, she realized that several passersby were staring at her. What was it that the soldiers had shouted? Witch? She was almost in the middle of the street by now, and people were still peering at her. She looked down at her filthy clothes. She felt her brittle, unkempt hair. A well-dressed man walked by, openly staring at her. Aledis stamped her foot and leapt toward him, baring her teeth like a dog attacking its prey. The man jumped backward and then ran off, slowing down only when he realized Aledis was not following him. Now it was Aledis who scrutinized all those around her, forcing them to lower their eyes one by one, although some of them still cast covert glances out of the corner of their eyes to see what she was doing.

What had happened? Men sent by the lord of Bellera had broken into her house and arrested Francesca as she rested on a chair. Nobody had given them any explanation. The soldiers roughly pushed the girls aside when they tried to intervene; they all turned to Aledis to see what she would do, but she was paralyzed by fear. A few clients ran out of the house, hose around their ankles. Aledis confronted the soldier who seemed to be in charge:

“What does this mean? Why are you arresting this woman?”

“On the orders of the lord of Bellera,” the man replied.

The lord of Bellera! Aledis looked toward Francesca, who was being held under the arms by two soldiers. The old woman’s body had begun to shake. Bellera! Ever since Arnau had put an end to the privileges at Montbui castle and Francesca had told Aledis her secret, the two women had overcome the only remaining barrier between them. How often had she heard the story of Llorenç de Bellera from Francesca’s lips? How often had she seen her weep when she remembered those days? And now ... another Bellera; and Francesca was being taken to the castle, just as when ...

Francesca was still trembling, held by the two soldiers.

“Let her go!” Aledis shouted at them. “Can’t you see you’re hurting her?” The two soldiers turned to their captain. “We’ll go of our own accord,” said Aledis, also looking in his direction.

The captain shrugged, and the soldiers handed the old woman over to Aledis.

They were taken to Navarcles castle, where they were shut in the dungeons. They were not mistreated, however. On the contrary, they were given food, water, and even bundles of straw to sleep on. It was only now that Aledis understood the reason: the lord of Bellera had wanted Francesca to reach Barcelona in good health. They were taken to the city two days later, in a cart, in complete silence. What for? Why? What did it all mean?

The noise all around her brought Aledis back to reality. She had been so caught up in her own thoughts, she had hardly realized she had walked all the way down Calle del Bisbe, then Calle Sederes, and had finally entered Plaza del Blat. The fine, sunny spring day had brought even more people than usual into the square. Alongside the grain sellers were dozens of curious onlookers. Aledis was standing under the old gateway to the city; she turned when the smell of freshly baked bread from the barrow on her left reached her nostrils. The baker glanced at her suspiciously, and Aledis remembered how she looked. She did not have a single coin on her. She swallowed hard and walked away, avoiding catching the baker’s gaze.

Twenty-five years; it had been twenty-five years since she had last been in these streets, seen these people, and breathed the air of Barcelona. Could the Pia Almoina still exist? They had been given nothing to eat that morning in the castle, and her stomach was reminding her of the fact. She walked back the way she had come, up toward the cathedral and the bishop’s palace. Her mouth began to water as she approached the line of beggars queueing for food outside the Pia Almoina. How often in her youth had she passed this very same spot, feeling nothing but pity for these hungry people who openly showed to anyone who passed by their need for public charity?

Aledis joined the queue. She lowered her head so that her hair would cover her face, and shuffled along with the rest of them toward the food. She concealed her face still further when she reached the novice, and stretched out her hands. Why did she have to ask for charity? She had a good house, and had saved enough money to live comfortably for the rest of her days. Men still found her desirable and ... a crust of hard bean bread, a cup of wine, and a bowl of soup. She ate everything, with as much enjoyment as all the poor beggars around her.

When she had finished, she lifted her gaze for the first time. She looked at the throng of beggars, cripples, and old people sitting at the tables. They all kept an eye on their neighbors and clutched their hunk of bread and bowl of soup tightly. What was the reason for her being there? Why had they kept Francesca in the bishop’s palace? Aledis got up. Her attention was caught by a young blond woman dressed in a scarlet robe, walking toward the cathedral. A noblewoman ... out on her own? But if she were not a noble, dressed like that she could only be a ... Teresa! Aledis ran over to her.

“We took turns outside the castle to find out what was happening to you,” Teresa explained after they had embraced. “It wasn’t hard convincing the soldiers at the gate to tell us.” The young woman winked one of her beautiful blue eyes. “When you were taken out and the soldiers told us you were headed for Barcelona, we had to find some way of getting here. That’s what took us so long. Where’s Francesca?”

“She’s under arrest in the bishop’s palace.”

“For what reason?”

Aledis shrugged. When the two of them had been split up, and the soldiers told her to get out of the palace, she had tried to hear what was going on. “Take the old woman to the dungeons,” was all she heard. Nobody had answered her questions, and they had pushed her out of the way. Her insistence on knowing why Francesca had been arrested led a young friar whose sleeve she was tugging to call the guard. She was thrown out of the palace to shouts of “Witch!”

“How many of you came?”

“Eulàlia and me.”

A glittering green dress came running toward them.

“Did you bring money?”

“Of course...”

“What about Francesca?” asked Eulàlia when she caught up with the other two.

“She’s been arrested,” Aledis told her. Eulàlia wanted to know why, but Aledis silenced her with a gesture. “I don’t know why.”

Aledis studied the two young women ... What mightn’t they discover? “I don’t know why she’s been arrested,” she repeated, “but we’ll find out, won’t we, girls?”

They both smiled mischievously at her.

JOAN DRAGGED THE muddy folds of his habit all through Barcelona. His brother had asked him to find Mar. How could he appear before her? After leaving Arnau, he had tried to make a pact with Eimerich. Instead of that, like one of the hapless villains he was used to judging as inquisitor, he had condemned himself with his own words, and had served only to make his brother seem more guilty. What could Eleonor have accused him of? For a few moments he thought of going to see his sister-in-law, but when he remembered the smile she had given him in Felip de Ponts’s house, he knew that would be no use. If she had denounced her own husband, what was she going to say to him?

Joan walked down Calle de la Mar to Santa Maria. Arnau’s church. Joan came to a halt and surveyed it. Although still covered in wooden scaffolding where masons came and went ceaselessly, the proud outlines of Santa Maria were plain to see. All the external walls and their buttresses had been completed. So had the apse and two of the four vaults in the main nave. The tracery of the third vault, on the end of whose keystone the king had paid for the image of his father, King Alfonso, on horseback to be sculpted, was already rising in a perfect arch, supported by a complicated network of scaffolding until the keystone could be lowered into place and the arch could soar free. All that was left to build were the two remaining vaults, and then Santa Maria’s new roof would be complete.

How could one not fall in love with a church like this? Joan recalled Father Albert and the first time he and Arnau had set foot in Santa Maria. He had not even known how to pray! Years later, while he was learning to pray, to read and to write, his brother was hauling blocks of stone to this very spot. Joan remembered the bloody wounds on his brother’s back those first days of work as a bastaix ... and yet he had smiled! He watched the master builders busy with the jambs and archivolts on the main doorway, while other experts worked on the statues, the doorways, the tracery that was different around each door, the forged iron grilles and the gargoyles with all their vast array of allegorical figures, the capitals of the columns. But what most caught his attention were the stained-glass windows, those works of art intended to filter the magical light of the Mediterranean so that it could play, hour after hour, almost minute by minute, with the shapes and colors inside the church.

The composition of the impressive rose window above the main doorway was already hinted at: in the center lay a small rondel, from the edge of which, like whimsical arrows or a carefully sculpted sunstone, grew the stone mullions that divided up the shapes of the main window. Beyond these, the tracery gave way to a row of pointed trefoils, with above them another row of quatrefoil lights that ended in rounded curves. It was in between all this stone tracery, as elsewhere in the narrow lights of the façade, that the pieces of leaded stained glass would eventually be placed: for now, though, the rose window looked like a huge spider’s web made of finely carved stone, just waiting for the master glaziers to fill in the gaps.

“They still have a lot to do,” thought Joan as he watched the hundred or so workmen who carried the hopes and illusions of a whole people on their backs. At that moment, a bastaix arrived carrying another huge block. Sweat poured down from his forehead to his calves; all his muscles stood out tautly as they rocked to the rhythm of each step that brought him closer to the church. But he was smiling, just as Joan’s brother had all those years ago. Joan could not take his eyes off him. The masons stopped their work up on the scaffolding to watch this fresh load of stones arriving. Another bastaix appeared after the first one, then another, and still another, all of them bent double under the weight. The sound of chisels on stone ceased, as the masons paid homage to these humble workers of La Ribera. For a few moments the whole of Santa Maria lay in enchanted silence. Then a mason broke the spell with his shout of encouragement from high on the scaffolding. His cry pierced the air, bounced off the stones, and entered the hearts of everyone there.

“Keep going!” Joan whispered, adding his voice to the clamor that had arisen. The bastaixos were smiling. As each of them deposited his stone on the ground, the shouts grew louder. Afterward, they were handed water-skins, which they raised high over their heads for the contents to run off their faces before they drank. Joan saw himself running along the beach to offer the bastaixos Bernat’s waterskin. Then he raised his eyes to the heavens. He had to go and find her: if that was the penitence the Lord was imposing on him, he would seek out Mar and confess the truth. He went round Santa Maria to Plaza del Born, then Pla d’en Llull and Santa Clara convent, leaving Barcelona by the San Daniel gate.

IT WAS NOT difficult for Aledis to find the lord of Bellera and Genis Puig. Apart from the corn exchange, where visiting merchants stayed, Barcelona had only five inns. She ordered Teresa and Eulàlia to hide on the way out to Montjuic hill until she came to fetch them. Aledis was silent as she watched them walk away, fond memories flooding her mind ...

When she could no longer see the bright gleam of their robes, she began her search. She went first to the Del Bou Inn, close by the bishop’s palace and Plaza Nova. When she appeared at the kitchen door to the rear of the inn, the scullion boy rudely shooed her away when she asked for the lord of Bellera. At the De la Massa Inn in Portaferrissa, also near the bishop’s palace, a woman kneading bread told her no two such gentlemen were staying there. So Aledis headed for the Estanyer Inn, on Plaza de la Llana. There another young lad brazenly stared her up and down.

“Who wants to know about the lord of Bellera?” he asked.

“My mistress,” replied Aledis. “She has been following him from Navarcles.”

The lad was tall and thin as a rake. He stared at Aledis’s breasts, then reached out his right hand and fondled one.

“What interest does your mistress have in this nobleman?”

Aledis did not move away, but stifled a smile. “It’s not for me to know.” The lad began to rub her breasts more vigorously. Aledis stepped closer to him and brushed the top of his thigh. He tensed. “But,” Aledis said, drawling her words, “if they are staying here, I may have to spend the night sleeping in the garden whilst my mistress...” By now she was stroking his groin.

“This morning,” the lad stammered, “two gentlemen came asking for somewhere to stay.”

This time, Aledis smiled openly. For a moment she thought of leaving the boy, but then ... why not? It had been so long since she had felt a young, clumsy body on top of her, someone driven only by passion ...

She pushed him into a small hut. The first time, the lad did not even have time to remove his hose, but after that Aledis was able to take advantage of every thrust of this casual object of her desire.

When Aledis stood up to get dressed again, the youth was lying on his back on the ground. He was out of breath, and staring blindly up at the rafters on the roof of the hut.

“If you see me again,” Aledis told him, “whatever happens, remember you don’t know me!”

She had to repeat this twice before she could secure his promise.

“YOU TWO WILL be my daughters,” she told Teresa and Eulàlia as she gave them the dresses she had just bought. “I have been recently widowed, and we are in Barcelona on our way to Girona, where we are hoping one of my brothers will take us in. We have been left with nothing. Your father was a tradesman ... a tanner from Tarragona.”

“For someone who has just become a widow and has been left with nothing, you look very cheerful,” Eulàlia exclaimed as she took off her green robe and smiled at Teresa.

“It’s true,” the other girl agreed. “You need to avoid looking so pleased with yourself. It’s as though you had just met—”

“Don’t worry,” Aledis intervened. “When necessary I’ll display all the grief that befits a recent widow.”

“And until it becomes necessary,” Teresa insisted, “could you not forget the widow and tell us why it is you are looking so happy?”

The two girls laughed out loud at her story. Hidden among the bushes on the slopes of Montjuic hill, Aledis could not help noticing how perfect and sensual their naked bodies were ... such was youth. For a brief moment, she saw herself on the same spot, many years earlier ...

“Ow!” Eulàlia protested. “This... scratches.”

Aledis stopped daydreaming and saw Eulàlia wearing a long, washed-out smock that came down to her ankles.

“The orphaned daughters of a tanner don’t wear silk.”

“But... does it have to be this?” protested Eulàlia, pulling at the cloth with her fingers.

“It’s quite normal,” Aledis insisted. “Anyway, you have both forgotten something.”

Aledis showed them two strips of clothing that were as faded and shapeless as their smocks. They came to get a closer look.

“What is it?” asked Teresa.

“They’re girdles, and are used to ...”

“No, you can’t want us to wear...”

“Decent women cover their breasts properly.” The two young women made as though to protest. “First your breasts,” Aledis said sternly, “then your smocks, and on top of them the kirtles. And you can thank the Lord that I bought you smocks and not hair shirts, because a little penance would not go amiss.”

The three women had to help wrap the girdles around one another.

“I thought you wanted us to seduce two noblemen,” Eulàlia complained while Aledis was pulling the girdle tight round her abundant breasts. “I don’t see how, dressed like this...”

“You leave that to me,” Aledis told her. “The kirtles are ... almost white, as a sign of virginity. Those two rogues will never miss the chance to sleep with virgins. You know nothing about men,” Aledis said as she finished dressing. “Don’t flirt or take liberties. Refuse all the time. Reject their advances as often as necessary.”

“What if we reject them so much they change their minds?”

Aledis raised her eyebrows at Teresa. “Poor little innocent,” she said, smiling. “All you two have to do is make sure they drink. The wine will do the rest. As long as you are with them they will have only one thought in minds. Believe me. And remember, Francesca has been arrested by the Church, and not by the city magistrate or the bailiff. Turn your conversation toward religious topics.”

The two girls looked at her in surprise. “Religious?” they exclaimed as one.

“I realize you don’t know much about them,” said Aledis, “but use your imagination. I think she’s accused of something to do with witchcraft ... When they threw me out of the palace, they shouted about me being a witch.”

A few hours later, the soldiers guarding the Trentaclaus gate allowed in a woman dressed in mourning clothes, with her hair coiled round her head. With her were her two daughters, dressed in near-white kirtles, with demurely plaited locks. They had common rope sandals on their feet, wore no makeup or perfume, and walked with downcast eyes behind their mother, staring at her ankles, as she had instructed them.

49

THE DUNGEON DOOR suddenly clanged open. This was not the usual time; the sun had not yet gone down sufficiently, and daylight was still struggling to find a way in through the bars of the tiny ground-level window, although the scene of misery inside seemed to make this an impossible endeavor amid all the dust and the foul vapors coming from the prisoners’ bodies. This was not the usual time for the door to open, and all the shadowy figures stirred. Arnau heard the sound of chains, which ceased when the jailer came in with the new prisoner. That meant he had not come in search of one of them. Another man ... or rather, another woman, Arnau thought, correcting himself when he saw the outline of the old woman in the doorway. What sin could that poor woman have committed?

The jailer pushed her inside the dungeon. She fell to the floor.

“Get up, witch!” his voice resonated round the entire dungeon. The old woman did not stir. The jailer gave the bundle at his feet two hefty kicks. The echoing sound of the two dull thuds seemed to last an eternity. “I said, get up!”

Arnau noticed how the other shadows tried to merge into the walls of the prison. The same shouts, the same gruff bark, the same voice. He had heard that voice often during the days he had been imprisoned, thundering from the far side of the door after one or another of the prisoners had been unchained. Then too he had noticed how the shadows shrank away from it, consumed with the fear of torture. First came the voice, then the shout, then a few moments later the heartrending cry of a body in pain.

“Get up, you old whore!”

The jailer kicked her again, but she still would not move. Eventually, puffing and blowing, he bent down, grasped her by the arm, and dragged her over to where he had been told to chain her up: as far as possible from the moneylender. The sound of keys and chains told them all what had happened to her. Before leaving the dungeon, the jailer came over to where Arnau was.

“Why?” he had asked when he had been ordered to chain the witch up as far away as possible from Arnau.

“This witch is the moneylender’s mother,” the officer of the Inquisition told him; he had heard it from one of the lord of Bellera’s men.

“Don’t think,” said the jailer when he was next to Arnau, “that you can pay the same to have your mother eat properly. Even if she is your mother, she is still a witch, and witches cost money.”

NOTHING HAD CHANGED: the farmhouse, with the tower to one side, still dominated the low rise. Joan looked up the hill and in his mind once more saw the assembled host, the nervous men with their drawn swords, the shouts of joy when he, on this very spot, succeeded in convincing Arnau to give up Mar in marriage. He had never got on well with the girl: what was he going to say to her now?

Joan looked up at the heavens and then, stooping and with downcast eyes, started to climb the gentle slope.

Outside, the farmhouse seemed deserted. The silence was broken only by the rustle of animals moving on the straw in the stables.

“Is there anybody there?” shouted Joan.

He was about to call out again when he spotted something moving by a corner of the house. A boy was staring at him, his eyes wide open in astonishment.

“Come here, boy,” Joan ordered him.

The youngster hesitated.

“Come here ...”

“What’s going on?”

Joan turned to look at the external staircase leading to the upper floor of the farmhouse. At the top was Mar, staring straight at him.

The two of them stood motionless in silence for quite some time. Joan tried to discover in this woman the image of the girl whose life he had handed to the Lord de Ponts, but the air of severity about her seemed far distant from the explosion of feelings that had occurred in this same farmhouse six years earlier. The seconds flew by, and Joan felt more and more inhibited. Mar meanwhile pierced him with her steady, unflinching gaze.

“What are you here for, Friar?” she asked him finally.

“I came to talk to you.” Joan had to raise his voice to reach her.

“I’m not interested in anything you might have to say.”

Mar made as though to turn on her heel, but Joan quickly added: “I promised Arnau I would talk to you.”

Contrary to his expectations, the mention of Arnau’s name did not seem to make any impact on her; but she did not go inside either.

“It’s not me who wishes to talk to you.” Joan let a few moments go by. “May I come up?”

Mar turned her back on him and went into the farmhouse. Joan walked to the foot of the staircase. He peered up at the heavens. Was this truly the penitence he deserved?

He cleared his throat to show her he was there. Mar was busy at the hearth, stirring a pot that hung from a hook over the fire.

“Speak,” was all she said.

Joan studied her back as she leaned over. Her hair cascaded down below her waist, almost as far as a pair of firm buttocks whose outline was very clear beneath her smock. She had turned into an ... attractive woman.

“Have you got nothing to say?” asked Mar, turning her head toward him briefly.

“Arnau has been put in jail by the Inquisition,” the Dominican blurted out.

Mar stopped stirring the food in the pot.

Joan said nothing more.

Her voice seemed to quaver and dance as delicately as the flames of the fire itself: “Some of us have been incarcerated for much longer.”

Mar still had her back to him. She straightened up, staring at the beams of the hearth.

“It wasn’t Arnau who put you there.”

Mar turned quickly to face him. “Wasn’t he the one who gave me to the Lord de Ponts?” she cried. “Wasn’t he the one who agreed to my marriage? Wasn’t he the one who decided not to avenge my dishonor? Ponts raped me! He kidnapped me and raped me!”

She had spat out the words. Her whole body was shaking, from her top lip to her hands, which she now raised to her breast. Joan could not bear to see the pain in her eyes.

“It wasn’t Arnau,” the friar repeated in a faint voice. “It was... it was me!” He was speaking loudly now. “Do you understand? It was me. I was the one who convinced him he should marry you off. What future was there for a raped girl? What would have become of you when the whole of Barcelona learned of your misfortune? Eleonor convinced me, and I was the one who arranged your kidnapping. I agreed to your dishonor in order to get Arnau to allow you to be married to someone else. It was I who was guilty of everything. Arnau would never have done it otherwise.”

They stared at each other. Joan could feel the weight of his habit lightening. Mar stopped shaking as tears welled up in her eyes.

“He loved you,” said Joan. “He loved you then and he loves you now. He needs you...”

Mar lifted her hands to her face. She bent her knees to one side, and her body sank until she was prostrate before the friar.

That was it. He had done it. Now Mar would go to Barcelona. She would tell Arnau and ... These were the thoughts racing through Joan’s mind as he bent to help Mar up ...

“Don’t touch me!”

Joan jumped away from her.

“Is something wrong, my lady?”

The friar turned toward the door. On the threshold stood a giant of a man. He was carrying a scythe and stared at him menacingly. Joan could see the little boy’s head poking out from behind his legs. The man was only a couple of feet from the friar, and seemed head and shoulders taller than him.

“Nothing is wrong,” said Joan, but the man came into the room, brushing him aside like a feather. “I’ve told you, there’s nothing wrong,” Joan insisted. “Go about your business.”

The little boy ran and hid behind the doorframe. Joan stopped looking in his direction, and when he turned to the others, he saw that the man with the scythe was kneeling in front of Mar, without touching her.

“Didn’t you hear me?” asked Joan. The man did not answer. “Do as you are told, and get about your business.”

This time the man did turn and look at him. “I take orders only from my mistress,” he said.

How many big, strong, proud men like him had fallen at Joan’s feet? How many had he seen sobbing and begging for forgiveness before he passed sentence? Joan’s eyes narrowed. He clenched his fists and took two steps toward the servant.

“How dare you disobey the Inquisition!” he cried.

Before he could even finish, Mar was on her feet. She was shaking again. The man with the scythe also stood up, but more slowly.

“Friar, how do you dare come into my house and threaten my servant? Inquisitor? Ha! You’re no more than a devil disguised as a friar. You were the one who raped me!” Joan could see the man’s fingers gripping the handle of the scythe. “You’ve admitted it!”

“I... ,” Joan stammered.

The servant came over to him and pushed the blunt edge of the scythe into his stomach.

“Nobody would find out, Mistress. He came on his own.”

Joan looked at Mar. There was no fear in her eyes, or compassion. There was only ... He turned as quickly as he could to make for the door, but the little boy slammed it shut and confronted him.

Behind his back, the man reached out with the scythe until it was hooked round Joan’s neck. This time it was the sharp edge he pressed against his throat. Joan did not move. The boy’s fearful expression had changed to mirror that of the two people near the hearth.

“What... what are you going to do, Mar?” As Joan spoke, he could feel the scythe cutting into his neck.

Mar said nothing for a few moments. Joan could hear her breathing.

“Shut him in the tower,” she ordered.

Mar had not been in there since the day the Barcelona host first made ready for its attack, then exploded in shouts of triumph. Ever since her husband had fallen at Calatayud, she had kept it locked.

50

THE WIDOW AND her two daughters crossed Plaza de la Llana to the Estanyer Inn. This was a tall, two-story building with the kitchen and the guests’ dining room on the ground floor and all the bedrooms on the first floor. The innkeeper greeted them. The kitchen lad was with him; when she saw him staring openmouthed at her, Aledis winked at him. “What are you staring at?” the innkeeper shouted, cuffing him round the head. The lad ran off to the back of the building. Teresa and Eulàlia had noticed the wink, and both smiled.

“You’re the ones who deserve a good slap,” Aledis whispered, taking advantage of a moment’s lack of attention by the innkeeper. “Stand still and stop scratching, will you? The next one who does will get...”

“These girdles are impossible ...”

“Be quiet,” Aledis ordered them, as the innkeeper turned his attention back to her.

He had a room where the three of them could sleep, although there were only two mattresses.

“Don’t worry, my man,” said Aledis. “My daughters are used to sharing a bed.”

“Did you see how that innkeeper looked at us when you told him we were used to sleeping together?” asked Teresa once they were safely in their room.

Two straw pallets and a small chest on which stood an oil lamp were all the furniture in the room.

“He was imagining lying between the two of us,” said Eulàlia with a laugh.

“And that was without him being able to appreciate any of your charms,” said Aledis. “I told you so.”

“We could work dressed like this. It seems to be successful.”

“It only works once,” Aledis said. “Or twice at most. Men like the idea of innocence, of virginity. But as soon as they’ve had it... We would have to go from place to place, practicing the deception, and we wouldn’t be able to ask them to pay.”

“There isn’t enough gold in all Catalonia that would make me wear this girdle or this...” Teresa started furiously scratching from her thighs to her breasts.

“Don’t scratch!”

“But no one can see us now,” the girl protested.

“The more you scratch, the more it will itch.”

“What about that wink you gave the scullion?”

Aledis stared at them. “That’s none of your business.”

“Did you ask him to pay?”

Aledis remembered the look on the lad’s face when he did not even have time to take off his hose, and the clumsy, violent way he had climbed on top of her. Not only men liked innocence, virginity ...

She smiled. “He gave me something.”

THEY WAITED IN their room until suppertime. Then they went down and sat at a rough table of unpolished wood. Soon afterward, Jaume de Bellera and Genis Puig made their appearance. From the moment they sat at their table on the far side of the room, they could not take their eyes off the two girls. There was no one else in the dining room. Aledis caught the girls’ attention. They both crossed themselves and began to make a start on the bowls of soup the innkeeper had brought.

“Wine? Only for me,” Aledis told him. “My daughters don’t drink.”

“It’s one jug of wine after the other for her ... since our father died,” Teresa said apologetically to the innkeeper.

“To get over her grief,” Eulàlia explained.

“Listen,” Aledis whispered to them some time later, “that makes three jugs of wine, and they have had their effect. In a moment I’m going to let my head drop on the table, and I’ll start snoring. From then on, you know what you have to do. We need to know why Francesca’s been arrested, and what they intend to do with her.”

Soon afterward, Aledis’s head drooped onto the table between her hands. But she was listening intently.

“Why not come over here?” came the sound of a man’s voice. Silence. “She’s drunk ... ,” the voice insisted.

“We won’t harm you,” said a second voice. “How could we, in a place like this, with the innkeeper as witness?”

Aledis thought of the innkeeper; he wouldn’t say a word, providing they let him lay his hands on something ...

“Don’t worry ... We are gentlemen...”

The two girls eventually gave in. Aledis heard them scraping their chairs back and standing up.

“You’re not snoring loudly enough,” Teresa whispered to her.

Aledis allowed herself a smile.

“A castle!”

Aledis could imagine Teresa and those incredible blue eyes of hers opening wide as she stared at the lord of Bellera, making sure he got an eyeful of all her charms.

“Did you hear that, Eulàlia? A castle. He’s a real nobleman. We’ve never talked with a noble before ...”

“Tell us about all your battles,” Aledis heard Eulàlia encouraging him. “Have you met King Pedro? Have you talked to him?”

“Who else do you know?” Teresa wanted to know.

The two girls pressed round Lord de Bellera. Aledis was tempted to open her eyes, just enough to see them at work ... but there was no point. Her girls knew what they were doing.

The castle, the king, the royal court... had they ever been there? The war ... squeals of terror when Genis Puig, who had no castle, no king, and had never been to court, tried to capture their attention by playing up all the battles he had fought in. And wine, lots and lots of wine ...

“What is a nobleman like you doing in the city, in this inn? Are you waiting to see someone important?” Aledis heard Teresa asking.

“We’ve brought in a witch,” Genis Puig boasted.

The girls had been talking to Lord de Bellera. Teresa saw him cast a disapproving look at his companion. Now was the time.

“A witch!” gushed Teresa, throwing herself on Jaume de Bellera and clasping both his hands in hers. “In Tarragona we saw one being burned. She shrieked as the flames leapt up her legs to her body, then her breasts, and...”

Teresa looked up at the ceiling as though following the path of the flames. She raised her hands to her own breast, but soon came back to reality, and looked with embarrassment at the nobleman, whose face was already flushed with desire.

Still holding her hands, Jaume de Bellera stood up.

“Come with me.” It sounded more like an order than a request. Teresa let herself be dragged away.

Genis Puig watched them leave.

“What about us?” he said to Eulàlia, suddenly dropping his hand onto her calf.

Eulàlia made no move to lift it off.

“First I want to hear everything about the witch. It excites me ...”

The knight slid his hand up her thigh. He began to tell her the story. When she heard the name “Arnau,” Aledis almost gave the game away by raising her head. “The witch is his mother,” she heard Genis Puig say. Revenge, revenge, revenge ...

“Now can we go?” Genis Puig pleaded when he had finished his account.

Aledis heard Eulàlia hesitate.

“I’m not sure...,” said the girl.

Genis Puig stood up, swaying. He slapped Eulàlia on the face.

“That’s enough nonsense. Come with me!”

“All right, let’s go.” She yielded.

ONCE SHE REALIZED she was alone in the dining room, Aledis found it hard to stand up. She put her hands to the back of her head and rubbed her neck. So they were going to try Arnau and Francesca—the Devil and the witch, according to Genis Puig.

“I’d take my own life before letting Arnau know I’m his mother,” Francesca had told her during one of their few conversations after Arnau’s speech on the plains of Montbui. “He’s a well-respected man,” Francesca went on before Aledis could say anything, “and I’m nothing more than the mistress of a bawdy house. Besides... there are many things I could never explain to him: why I didn’t follow his father and him, why I left him to die...”

Aledis had looked down.

“I’ve no idea what his father told him about me,” Francesca continued, “but whatever it was, there’s nothing I can do about it now. Time leads one to forget even a mother’s love. Whenever I think of him, I like to picture him on that platform defying the nobles; I have no wish to see him brought down from on high. Best leave things as they are, Aledis. You’re the only person in the world who knows my secret; I’m trusting you not to give it away even after my death. Promise me that, Aledis.”

But what use was her promise now?

WHEN ESTEVE CAME back up into the tower, he was no longer carrying the scythe.

“The mistress says you are to put this over your eyes,” he said, throwing Joan a piece of cloth.

“Who do you think you are?” Joan exclaimed, kicking the cloth away.

There was not much room inside the tower, scarcely three steps in any direction. With a single bound, Esteve was beside Joan. He slapped him hard twice, once on either cheek.

“The mistress says you are to cover your eyes.”

“I’m an inquisitor!”

This time, the blow from Esteve sent Joan crashing against the wall. He lay there at Esteve’s feet.

“Put the blindfold on.” Esteve lifted him with one hand. “Put it on,” he repeated when Joan was upright.

“Do you think that by using violence you can intimidate an inquisitor? You cannot imagine—”

Esteve did not let him finish. First he punched him hard in the face, and Joan went hurtling against the wall once again. Then Mar’s servant began to kick him—in the groin, the stomach, his chest, his face ...

Joan curled up in a ball to protect himself from more pain. Esteve picked him up with one hand.

“The mistress says you are to put it on.”

Joan was bleeding from the mouth. His legs gave way under him. When the servant let go, he tried to stay on his feet, but a stab of pain in his knee made him lurch forward and clutch Esteve’s body. The giant pushed him away.

“Put it on.”

The cloth was beside him. Joan realized he had wet himself and that his habit was sticking to his thighs.

He picked up the blindfold and put it on.

Joan heard the servant close the tower door and go down the staircase. Silence. On and on. Then he heard several footsteps on the stairs. Joan clambered up, gripping the wall. The door opened. They had brought some pieces of furniture with them; could they be chairs?

“I know you have sinned.” Mar was seated on a footstool. As she intoned the Inquisition’s charge, her voice reverberated around the room. Next to her, the little boy was watching the friar closely.

Joan said nothing.

“The Inquisition never blindfolds its... prisoners,” he complained finally. “Perhaps if I could see you face-to-face ...”

“That’s true,” he heard Mar reply. “You only blindfold their souls, their dignity, decency, their honor. I know you have sinned,” she said again.

“I won’t accept a trick like that.”

Mar signaled to Esteve. The servant went over to Joan and punched him hard in the stomach. Joan bent double, gasping for breath. By the time he had managed to straighten up again, there was complete silence in the room. He was panting so hard he could not even hear the others breathing. His legs and chest ached; his face felt raw. Nobody said a word. A knee to the outside of his thigh toppled him to the floor again.

Pain surged through him. He curled up into a ball once more.

Still silence.

A kick to his kidneys sent him arcing in the opposite direction.

“What do you want from me?” Joan screamed between the waves of pain.

Nobody answered. Finally the pain subsided, and it was then that Esteve picked him up again and hauled him in front of Mar.

Joan struggled to stay on his feet.

“What do you ... ?”

“I know you have sinned.”

How far would she go? Would she really beat him to death? Was she capable of killing him? Yes, he had sinned; but what authority did Mar have to judge him? He shuddered so violently he thought he was about to collapse again.

“You’ve already condemned me,” Joan managed to say. “Why judge me then?”

Silence. Darkness.

“Tell me! Why do you want to sit in judgment on me?”

“You are right,” he heard her say at length. “I’ve already condemned you, but remember it was you who confessed your guilt. On this very spot, it was you who robbed me of my virginity; this was where you had me raped time and again. Hang him and get rid of his body,” Mar told Esteve abruptly.

Mar’s footsteps began to descend the staircase. Joan felt Esteve tie his hands behind his back. He could not move; none of his muscles responded. The servant raised him in order to get him to stand on the stool where Mar had been sitting. Then Joan heard the noise of a rope being thrown up over one of the wooden beams in the ceiling. Esteve missed his aim, and the rope clattered to the floor. Joan wet himself again, and his bowels loosened. The noose was round his neck.

“I have sinned!” shouted Joan with what little strength he had left. At the foot of the stairs, Mar heard his anguished confession.

At last.

Mar walked back up to the top of the tower, followed by the little boy.

“Now I’ll listen to you,” she told Joan.

AT FIRST LIGHT, Mar was ready to leave for Barcelona. Dressed in her finest robes and wearing the few jewels she possessed, she allowed Esteve to lift her onto her mule. She urged the animal on.

“Take care of the house,” she told the servant as her mount began to set off. “And you, help your father.”

Esteve pushed Joan behind the mule.

“Keep your word, Friar,” he said.

With downcast eyes, Joan stumbled after Mar. What would happen now? Last night, when the blindfold had finally been removed, he had found himself face-to-face with her by the light of the torches hanging on the tower’s circular walls.

She had spat in his face.

“You don’t deserve any reprieve ... but Arnau might need you,” she said. “That’s the only thing preventing me killing you with my own bare hands here and now.”

The mule’s small, sharp hooves clopped their way along the track. Joan followed their rhythm, his eyes fixed on his feet. He had confessed everything to her: from his conversations with Eleonor to the hatred that had made him such a ferocious inquisitor. It was then that Mar had snatched off the blindfold and spat in his face.

The mule plodded on slowly and docilely toward Barcelona. To his left, Joan could smell the sea, accompanying him on his pilgrimage.

51

THE SUN WAS already beating down by the time Aledis left the Estanyer Inn and mingled with the people crossing Plaza de la Llana. Barcelona was wide awake. Some women, equipped with buckets, pots, and jars, were queueing at the Cadena well, next to the inn, while others were crowding round the butcher’s stall on the far side. They were all talking loudly and laughing. Aledis would have liked to have been out earlier, but donning her widow’s disguise—with the doubtful help of two girls who never ceased pestering her with questions about what was going to happen next, what was going to become of Francesca, if she were really going to be burned as a witch, as the noblemen had said—had taken her longer than she had anticipated. At least no one was staring at her as she walked down Calle Boria toward Plaza del Blat. Aledis felt odd: she had always attracted men’s attention and won scornful looks from women, but now, with the heat making her black robes stick to her, she looked all round and did not see anyone so much as giving her a second glance.

The noise from Plaza del Blat told her she could expect more people, more sun, more heat. She was perspiring heavily, and her breasts chafed against the coarse girdle wrapped tightly round them. Just before she reached Barcelona’s main market, Aledis turned right, heading for the shade of Calle de los Semolers. She walked up the street until she reached Plaza del Oli, where customers had come in search of the best olive oil or were buying bread at the stall. She crossed the square until she came to the San Joan fountain, where none of the women lined up gave her a second look either.

Turning to her left, Aledis soon arrived at the cathedral and the bishop’s palace. The day before they had thrown her out, calling her a witch. Would they recognize her now? The lad at the inn ... Aledis smiled while she searched for a side entrance; that lad was much more likely to have recognized her than any of the Inquisition’s soldiers.

“I’m looking for the jailer. I have a message for him,” she said in reply to the question from the guard at the door.

The soldier let her past, and showed her the way down to the dungeons.

As she advanced down the stairs, all light and colors gradually disappeared. At the foot, she found herself in an empty rectangular antechamber. It had a beaten earth floor and was lit by torches in the wall. At one end of the room, the jailer was resting his mounds of flesh on a stool; at the other was the beginning of a dark passageway.

The man studied her in silence as she approached him.

Aledis took a deep breath.

“I would like to see the old woman brought in yesterday,” she said, clinking her purse.

Without so much as moving or replying, the jailer spat close to her feet, and waved his hand dismissively. Aledis took a step back.

“No,” was all he said.

Aledis opened the purse. The man’s eyes greedily followed the gleam of coins that fell out on her hand. He had strict orders: no one was to enter the dungeons without express authorization by Nicolau Eimerich, and he had no wish to have to face the grand inquisitor. He knew what the grand inquisitor was like when he grew angry ... and the methods he used on those who disobeyed him. But those coins the woman was offering him ... And besides, hadn’t the official added that what the inquisitor really wanted to avoid was anyone having contact with the moneylender? And this woman did not want to see him; she was interested in the witch.

“All right,” he agreed.

NICOLAU THUMPED THE table.

“What can that idiot have thought he was doing?”

The young monk who had brought him the news started back. His brother, a wine merchant, had told him what had happened that same evening, while they were having supper in his house, with five children playing merrily in the background.

“It’s the best bit of business I’ve done in years,” his brother had told him. “Apparently Arnau’s brother the friar has given instructions to sell off commissions in order to raise money, and by God if he carries on this way, he’ll succeed: Arnau’s assistant is selling everything at half price.” At that, he raised his cup of wine and, still smiling, proposed a toast to Arnau.

When he heard the news, Nicolau fell silent. Then he flushed, and finally exploded. The young monk heard the orders he shouted to his captain:

“Go and fetch Brother Joan here! Tell the guards to find him!”

As the wine merchant’s brother hurriedly left the room, Nicolau shook his head. What had that impudent little friar imagined? That he could cheat the Inquisition by emptying his brother’s coffers? That fortune was destined for the Holy Office! All of it! Eimerich clenched his fists until his knuckles were white.

“Even if I have to see him on a bonfire!” he growled.

“Francesca.” ALEDIS KNELT beside the old woman, who pulled a face that might have been a smile. “What have they done to you? How are you?” The old woman did not answer. The groaning and wailing of the other prisoners filled the silence. “Francesca, they have taken Arnau. That’s why they brought us here.”

“I know ...”

Aledis shook her head, but before she could ask how she knew, Francesca went on: “He’s over there.”

Aledis turned her head to look at the opposite end of the dungeon. She saw a dark figure standing there, studying them.

“Listen to me,” the words rang out, “you who are visiting the old woman.” Aledis turned again to look in the direction of the figure. “I want to talk to you. I’m Arnau Estanyol.”

“What’s going on, Francesca?”

“Ever since I was thrown in here, he’s been asking me why the jailer says I’m his mother. He says his name is Arnau Estanyol, and that he’s been put in prison by the Inquisition. You can imagine what a torture that has been.”

“What have you told him?”

“Nothing.”

“Listen!”

This time Aledis did not turn round.

“The Inquisition wants to prove that Arnau is a witch’s son,” she explained to Francesca.

“Listen to me, please.”

Aledis could feel Francesca’s hands gripping her forearms. The old woman’s despair only added to the pathos of Arnau’s entreaties.

“Aren’t you ... ?” Aledis struggled to speak. “Aren’t you going to tell him anything?”

“Nobody must know Arnau is my son. Do you hear me, Aledis? If I’ve never admitted it before, now that the Inquisition is on his heels I am even less likely to ... You are the only one who knows it.” The old woman’s voice grew clearer. “Jaume de Bellera ...”

“Please!” came the voice in the gloom.

Aledis turned toward Arnau. She could not see him through her tears, but was careful not to wipe them away.

“Only you, Aledis,” Francesca insisted. “Swear to me you will never tell anyone.”

“But the lord of Bellera ...”

“Nobody can prove it. Swear to me, Aledis.”

“They will torture you.”

“More than life already has? More than the silence now is doing, when I have to say nothing in the face of Arnau’s pleas? Swear it.”

Francesca’s eyes gleamed in the darkness.

“I swear.”

Aledis swore her oath, then flung her arms round Francesca. For the first time in many years, she realized how frail the older woman was.

“I ... I don’t want to leave you here,” she said, sobbing. “What will become of you?”

“Don’t worry about me,” Francesca whispered in her ear. “I’ll withstand everything until I’ve convinced them Arnau is not my son.” She struggled to breathe. “One Bellera ruined my life. I won’t let his son ruin Arnau’s.”

Aledis kissed Francesca and sat for a few moments with her mouth pressed against the old woman’s cheek. Then she got to her feet.

“Listen to me!”

Aledis stared at the dark figure.

“Don’t go to him,” Francesca begged her from the floor.

“Come here! I beg you!”

“You won’t be able to bear it, Aledis. You swore to me.”

Arnau and Aledis stared at each other in the darkness. Two shadowy figures. Aledis’s tears glistened as they rolled down her cheeks.

Arnau sank to the ground when he saw the unknown visitor head straight for the dungeon door.

THAT SAME MORNING, a woman riding a mule entered Barcelona by the San Daniel gate. Behind her limped a Dominican friar who did not even look up at the soldiers on guard. The two of them went on in silence through the city until they reached the bishop’s palace, with the friar still trailing behind the mule.

“Brother Joan?” asked one of the guards at the palace doorway.

The Dominican raised his battered face to the soldier.

“Brother Joan?” he asked again.

Joan nodded.

“The grand inquisitor has given orders for us to take you to him as soon as possible.”

The soldier called for the guard, and several of his colleagues came to take charge of Joan.

The woman did not even dismount from her mule.

52

SAHAT BURST INTO the store the old merchant had in Pisa, down in the port on the banks of the Arno. Some workmen and apprentices tried to greet him, but the Moor paid them no heed. “Where is your master?” he asked everyone he met, striding among the huge bales of merchandise piled up in the vast establishment. Sahat finally found him at the far end of the building, bent over some lengths of silk.

“What’s happening, Filippo?”

The old merchant straightened up with difficulty. He turned to Sahat. “Yesterday a ship bound for Marseilles arrived.”

“I know. Is something wrong?”

Filippo studied Sahat. How old could he be? One thing was for sure: he was no longer young. He was as well dressed as ever, although he avoided the ostentation that many far less rich than he fell into. What had happened between him and Arnau? Sahat had never wanted to tell him. Filippo remembered the slave arriving from Catalonia, his certificate of emancipation, the money order he brought from Arnau ...

“Filippo!”

Sahat’s cry brought him back to the present. There was no denying, he thought, that the Moor still had the force and energy of a hopeful young man. He did everything with the same great determination ...

“Filippo! Please!”

“You’re right, you’re right. I’m sorry.” The old man hobbled over to him and leaned on his arm. “You’re quite right. Help me, and we’ll go to my office.”

In the trading circles of Pisa, Filippo Tescio asked few people for help. This public show of confidence by the old man could open more doors than a thousand gold florins. On this occasion, however, Sahat stopped the old man’s slow advance.

“Filippo, please.”

The old man tugged at his sleeve. “News ... bad news. Arnau,” he said, giving him time to recover his balance. “Arnau has been arrested by the Inquisition.”

Sahat said nothing.

“The reasons aren’t very clear,” Filippo went on. “His assistants have started selling his commissions, and apparently his situation ... But that is only a rumor, and probably a spiteful one. Sit down,” said the old man when they reached what he called his office. This was no more than a table on a raised platform from which he supervised the work of three clerks who sat at similar tables to note down all the transactions in huge account books, and from which he could keep an eye on all the activity in the warehouse.

Filippo sighed as he sat down.

“That’s not all,” he added. Seated opposite him, Sahat did not react. “This Easter the people of Barcelona attacked the Jewry. The Jews were said to have profaned a Christian host. They were fined a huge amount, and three of them were executed ...” Filippo could see Sahat’s lower lip start to tremble. “Hasdai.”

The old man looked away from Sahat for a few seconds, to allow him to recover. When he looked back, he saw his lips were drawn in a firm line. Sahat took a deep breath and raised his hands to his face to wipe his eyes.

“Here,” said Filippo, handing him a letter. “It’s from Jucef. A ship from Barcelona bound for Alexandria left it with my agent in Naples, and the captain of the ship heading for Marseilles brought it to me. Jucef has taken over from his father. In the letter he tells me everything that has happened, although he does not say much about Arnau.”

Sahat took the letter, but did not open it.

“Hasdai burned at the stake, and Arnau arrested,” he said, “and me here!”

“I’ve booked you a passage to Marseilles,” Filippo told him. “The ship leaves at dawn tomorrow. From Marseilles it should be easy to reach Barcelona.”

“Thank you,” said Sahat in almost a whisper.

Filippo sat silent.

“I came here in search of my origins,” Sahat began. “To search for the family I thought I had lost. Do you know what I found?” Filippo simply stared at him. “When I was sold as a boy, my mother and five brothers and sisters were alive. I only ever found one of them ... and I’m not sure he was my real brother. He was the slave of a workman in the port of Genoa. When he was pointed out to me, I did not recognize him ... I couldn’t even remember his name. He was limping, the little finger of his right hand was missing, and so were both of his ears. At first I thought he must have had a very cruel master if that was how he punished him, but later I learned that...” Sahat paused and looked across at the old man. He made no comment. “I bought his freedom and made sure he was given a good sum of money, without telling him it was me who was behind all this. The money lasted him only six days: six days during which he was constantly drunk, and managed to spend on gambling and women what to him must have been a fortune. He sold himself as a slave again to his former master in return for a bed and food.” Sahat waved his hand dismissively. “That’s all I found here: a drunken, brawling brother...”

“You also found a few friends ... ,” said Filippo.

“That’s true. I’m sorry. I meant ...”

“I know what you meant.”

The two men sat gazing down at the documents on the table. They could hear the noise and bustle of the warehouse all around them.

“Sahat,” Filippo said finally, “for many years I was Hasdai’s agent, and now, as long as God grants me life, I’ll do the same for his son. In addition, thanks to Hasdai and you, I also became Arnau’s agent. During all that time, I have heard only good things of Arnau, from traders, sailors, or sea captains. The news of what he did for his serfs reached even here! What happened between the two of you? If you had fallen out, he would not have rewarded you with your freedom, still less instructed me to give you all that money. What happened for you to abandon him, while he rewarded you in that way?”

“It was a girl ... an extraordinary girl.”

“Ah!”

“No,” the Moor protested, “it’s not what you think.”

And for the first time in six years, Sahat told him everything that he had until then kept to himself.

“HOW DARE YOU!” Nicolau Eimerich’s angry shout echoed along the corridors of the bishop’s palace. He did not even wait for the guards to leave the room. The inquisitor strode up and down the chamber, waving his arms. “How dare you put at risk something that by right belongs to the Holy Office?” Nicolau turned abruptly toward Joan, who was standing in the center of the room. “How dare you sell off commissions cheaply like that?”

Joan did not reply. He had spent a sleepless night being mistreated and humiliated. He had just had to walk several miles behind the back end of a mule. His whole body ached. He stank, and his filthy, mud-caked habit scratched at his skin. He had not had a bite to eat since the previous day, and he was thirsty. No. He was not going to reply.

Nicolau came up behind him.

“What are you trying to do, Brother Joan?” he whispered in his ear. “Could it be you wish to sell off your brother’s fortune so that the Inquisition cannot have it?”

He stood close to Joan for a few seconds.

“By God, you stink!” he said, leaping away from him. He waved his arms in the air once more. “You smell like a peasant.” He paced the room muttering to himself, before he finally sat down again. “The Inquisition has taken possession of your brother’s account books. There will be no more selling.” Joan did not move. “I’ve forbidden all visits to the dungeons, so do not try to see him. His trial will start in a few days.”

Still Joan did not react.

“Didn’t you hear me, Friar? Within a few days I’ll sit in judgment on your brother!”

Nicolau thumped the table.

“That’s enough! Get out of here!”

Joan dragged the hem of his filthy habit across the shiny floor tiles of the grand inquisitor’s office.

JOAN PAUSED IN the doorway to allow his eyes to get accustomed to the bright sunlight. Mar was standing there waiting for him, the mule’s halter in her hand. He had brought her here from her farmhouse... How could he possibly tell her that the grand inquisitor had forbidden any visits to Arnau? How was he going to bear that sense of guilt on top of all the rest?

“Are you going out, Friar?” he heard behind him.

Joan turned, and found himself confronted by a widow in black. Her face was streaming with tears.

They looked at each other.

“Joan?” the woman asked.

Those big brown eyes. That face...

“Joan?” she asked again. “Joan, it’s me, Aledis. Don’t you remember me?”

“The tanner’s daughter ... ,” Joan started to say.

“What’s going on, Friar?”

Mar had walked up to the doorway. Aledis saw Joan turn toward the newcomer, then back at her, and once again toward the woman with the mule.

“A childhood friend,” he said. “Aledis, this is Mar. Mar, this is Aledis.”

The two women nodded at each other.

“This is no place to stand and talk!” The guard’s barked command startled all three of them. “Clear the doorway, will you?”

“We’ve come to see Arnau Estanyol,” said Mar, still gripping the mule’s halter.

The soldier looked her up and down. A mocking smile appeared on his lips.

“The moneylender?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Mar.

“The grand inquisitor has forbidden any visits to him.”

He went to push Aledis and Joan out of the doorway.

“Why has he done that?” asked Mar, as the other two stepped out into the street.

“You should ask the friar here that,” said the soldier, gesturing toward Joan.

The three of them moved away from the palace.

“I should have killed you yesterday.”

Aledis saw Joan lower his eyes to the ground. He said nothing. Then she studied the woman with the mule, standing there proud and erect. What could have happened the day before? Joan made no attempt to hide his battered face, and his companion wanted to see Arnau. Who could this woman be? Arnau was married to the baroness. It was she who had stood beside him on the platform at Montbui castle when he had renounced all his privileges ...

“Arnau’s trial is to start in a few days’ time ...”

Mar and Aledis came to an abrupt halt. Joan walked on a few paces, until he realized the women were no longer with him. When he turned back toward them, he saw they were looking intently at each other, as though asking, “Who are you?”

“I doubt whether the friar ever had a childhood ... and still less knew anything about girls,” said Mar.

Aledis met her gaze. Mar stood there proudly; her bright young eyes seemed to want to pierce her through. Even the mule appeared to be listening to her every word, its ears pricked.

“You are nothing if not blunt,” Aledis told her.

“That’s what life has taught me.”

“Thirty years ago, if my parents had given their consent, I would have been married to Arnau.”

“And six years ago, if I’d been treated like a human being rather than an animal,” Mar said, glancing at Joan, “I would still be at Arnau’s side.”

The two women fell silent as they again measured each other with their gaze.

“But I haven’t seen Arnau in twenty years,” Aledis finally admitted. “I’m not trying to compete with you,” she was trying to tell her, in a language only two women could understand.

Mar shifted her weight from one leg to the other and relaxed her grip on the mule’s halter. She rolled her eyes, and stopped challenging Aledis.

“I live outside Barcelona. Do you have anywhere to put me up?” she asked after a few moments.

“I live outside the city as well. I am being put up ... with my daughters, in the Estanyer Inn. But we could arrange something,” she added quickly when she saw Mar hesitate. “What about him?” Aledis pointed her chin at Joan.

The two women surveyed him, standing there with his bruised face and his filthy, torn habit hanging down from his stooped shoulders.

“He has a lot to explain,” said Mar, “and we might need him. He can sleep with the mule.”

Joan waited for the two women to set off again, then followed a few steps behind.

“‘WHY ARE you here?’ she will ask me. ‘What were you doing in the bishop’s palace?’” Aledis cast a sideways glance at her new companion; she was walking on serenely, pulling at the mule, and not stepping aside for anyone they came across on the way. What could have happened between Mar and Joan? The friar seemed completely crushed ... How on earth could a Dominican allow a woman to send him to sleep with a mule? They crossed Plaza del Blat. Aledis had admitted she knew Arnau, but had not told them she had seen him in the dungeons, begging for her to come close. “What about Francesca? What should I tell them about her? That she’s my mother? No. Joan knew who she was, and knows she wasn’t called Francesca. My dead husband’s mother? What will they say when she is brought in during Arnau’s trial? I ought to have an answer. And when they find out she is a whore? How could my mother-in-law be a whore? Better to pretend I know nothing: but then what was I doing in the bishop’s palace?”

“OH,” ALEDIS REPLIED when Mar asked her the question, “it was some business related to my deceased husband. Since we were passing through Barcelona ...”

Eulalia and Teresa glanced at her, but carried on eating out of their bowls. The two women had reached the inn and persuaded the innkeeper to place a third straw pallet in the room where Aledis and her daughters were staying. When she told him he had to sleep in the stable with the mule, Joan made no demur.

“Whatever you may hear,” Aledis whispered to the girls, “don’t say a thing. Try to avoid answering any questions, and remember: we don’t know anyone called Francesca.”

The five of them sat down to eat.

“Well, Friar,” Mar began, “why has the inquisitor forbidden all visits to Arnau?”

Joan had not touched his food.

“I needed money for the jailer,” he said wearily, “and since Arnau’s business had no cash, I ordered the sale of some of his commissions. Eimerich thought I was trying to get rid of Arnau’s fortune so that the Inquisition could not get hold of it ...”

At that moment, the lord of Bellera and Genis Puig came in. They both beamed when they saw the girls.

“Joan,” Aledis said quickly, “yesterday those two noblemen were bothering my daughters, and I have the impression that their intentions... Could you help me make sure they don’t trouble my daughters again?”

Joan turned toward the two men while they stood there ogling Teresa and Eulàlia, obviously remembering the previous night. When they caught sight of Joan’s black habit, their smiles vanished. The friar looked at them steadily, and the two nobles sat down quietly at their table, then stared down at the food the innkeeper had brought them.

“On what charges are they trying Arnau?” Aledis asked Joan when he turned his attention back to them.

SAHAT WATCHED AS the final preparations were made for the ship bound for Marseilles to leave port. It was a solid, single-masted galley, with a rudder at the stern and two at the sides, and with room for 120 oarsmen.

“It is a very rapid and safe ship,” Filippo told him. “They’ve had several scrapes with pirates and have always managed to escape. You’ll be in Marseilles in three or four days.” Sahat nodded. “From there you’ll have no problem finding a cargo vessel bound for Barcelona.”

As he pointed to the galley with his stick, Filippo clung to Sahat with his other hand. Officials, traders, and workmen alike greeted him as they went past, and then did the same with Sahat, the Moor he was leaning on for support.

“The weather is fine,” Filippo added, this time pointing his cane up at the sky. “You won’t have any problems.”

The galley captain came to the side of the ship and waved at Filippo.

“I have the feeling I may not see you again,” said the old man. Sahat turned to look at him, but Filippo clung to him even more tightly. “I’m growing old, Sahat.”

The two men embraced at the foot of the ship.

“Take care of my affairs,” Sahat said, stepping back.

“I will, and when I am no longer able to,” Filippo said in a shaky voice, “my sons will carry on for me. Then, wherever you may be, it will be for you to give them a helping hand.”

“I will,” Sahat promised in turn.

Filippo drew Sahat to him again and kissed him full on the lips. The crowd waiting for this last passenger to come aboard murmured at this show of affection from Filippo Tescio.

“Godspeed,” the old man said.

Sahat ordered the two slaves carrying his possessions to go on ahead, then went on board himself. By the time he had emerged at the galley’s side, Filippo had vanished.

The sea was calm. There was no wind, but the galley sped along thanks to the efforts of its 120 oarsmen.

“I didn’t have the courage,” wrote Jucef in his letter after he had explained what had happened following the theft of the host, “to escape from the Jewry to be with my father in his final moments. I hope he understands, wherever he may be now.”

Standing in the prow of the galley, Sahat raised his eyes to the horizon. “You and your kind had the courage to live in a Christian city,” he said to himself. He had read and reread the letter many times: “Raquel did not want to escape, but we convinced her she must.”

Sahat jumped to the end of the letter:Yesterday, the Inquisition arrested Arnau. Today, thanks to a Jew who works in the bishop’s household, I discovered that it was Arnau’s wife, Eleonor, who accused him of being a friend of Jews. Since the Inquisition needs two witnesses to bring a charge, Eleonor has called several priests from Santa Maria de la Mar to testify that they overheard an argument between her and her husband; apparently what Arnau said then is considered sacrilegious and supports Eleonor’s accusation.

It was a very complicated affair, Jucef added. On the one hand, Arnau was a very rich man, and the Inquisition was interested in his fortune; on the other, he was in the hands of a man like Nicolau Eimerich. Sahat had a strong memory of the arrogant inquisitor, who had occupied the post six years before he himself had left Catalonia, and whom he had seen at some religious ceremonies to which he had been obliged to accompany Arnau.Ever since you left, Eimerich has been gathering more and more power. He has not even been afraid to publicly challenge the monarch. For years, the king has not paid revenues to the pope, and as a result Urban IV has offered Sardinia to the lord of Arborea, the leader of the rebellion against the Catalans. And after the long war with Castille, there is unrest again among the Corsican nobles. Eimerich, who depends directly on the pope, has taken advantage of all this to openly oppose the king. He insists the Inquisition should have the right to try Jews and other non-Christians, God forbid! But the king, who is responsible for all the Jewries in Catalonia, is strongly opposed to this. Eimerich is still trying to convince the pope, who has no great wish to defend our monarch’s interests.But in addition to attempting to attack the Jewries, against the king’s interests, Eimerich has also dared denounce the works of the Catalan theologian Ramon Llull as heresy. For more than half a century now, Llull’s doctrines have been treated with respect by the Catalan Church. Seeing this attack as a personal insult, the king has appointed jurists and philosophers to defend his work.In view of all this, I am afraid that Eimerich will try to turn the trial against Arnau, a Catalan baron and consul of the sea, into a new confrontation with the king in order to cement still further his position, while at the same time securing a considerable fortune for the Inquisition. I understand that Eimerich has already written to Urban IV to inform him that he will keep what the king is owed by Arnau to pay the revenues Pedro owes him; so that at one and the same time the inquisitor can wreak his revenge on the king through a Catalan nobleman, and also strengthen his position with the pope.I also think that Arnau’s personal situation is delicate, if not desperate. His brother, Joan, is known to be a cruel inquisitor; his wife is the one who has made the accusation against him; my father is dead; and the rest of us, given the charge of befriending Jews and for his own good, dare not show our subbort for him. You are the only one he has left.

That was how Jucef ended his letter: You are the only one he has left. Sahat put the letter into the small chest in which he kept all the correspondence he had had with Hasdai over the past five years. You are the only one he has left. Standing at the prow of the galley, with the box in his hands, Sahat gazed out at the horizon. “Row, men ... I am the only one he has left.”

AT A SIGNAL from Aledis, Eulalia and Teresa retired to bed. Joan had already left them some time earlier; Mar had not responded to his farewell.

“Why do you treat him like that?” Aledis asked once the two of them were alone in the dining room. The only sound was the crackling of the almost spent logs on the fire. Mar said nothing. “After all, he is Arnau’s brother...”

“That friar deserves no better.”

As she spoke, Mar did not even raise her eyes from the table, where she was trying to remove a splinter of wood. “She is a beautiful woman,” thought Aledis. Her long, wavy hair hung down over her shoulders. Her features were well defined: plump lips, prominent cheekbones, a strong chin, and a straight nose. On their way from the palace to the inn, Aledis had been surprised at how white and perfect Mar’s teeth looked, and could not help noticing how firm and shapely her body was. Yet her hands were those of someone who had worked hard in the fields: they were rough and calloused.

Mar left the splinter and looked up at Aledis. The two women stared at each other in silence.

“It’s a long story,” she admitted.

“If you want to tell it, I have the time,” said Aledis.

Mar’s mouth twitched, and she let several more seconds go by. Why not, after all? It had been years since she had talked to a woman; years that she had lived wrapped up in herself, doing nothing but work inhospitable lands, hoping that the ears of wheat and the sun would understand her misfortune and take pity on her. Why not? Aledis seemed like a good woman.

“My parents died in the plague outbreak, when I was no more than a child ...”

Mar told her everything. Aledis trembled when Mar spoke of the love she had felt on the plain outside Montbui castle. “I understand,” she almost blurted out. “I also ...” Arnau, Arnau, Arnau; his name came up after almost every five words. Aledis remembered the sea breeze playing on her young body, betraying her innocence, stirring her desire. Then Mar told her about how she had been kidnapped and forced to marry her husband; her confession reduced her to tears.

“Thank you,” said Mar when she could speak again.

Aledis took her hand.

“Do you have any children?” she asked.

“I had one,” said Mar, squeezing her hand. “He died four years ago, as an infant, when there was another outbreak of plague among children. His father never knew him; he didn’t even know I was pregnant. He died at Calatayud defending a king who instead of leading his troops boarded ship in Valencia and set sail for Roussillon to safeguard his family from the plague.” As she spoke, Mar smiled disdainfully.

“What has all this got to do with Joan?” asked Aledis.

“He knew I loved Arnau ... and that Arnau loved me too.”

When she had heard everything, Aledis slapped the table. Night had crept up on them, and the noise resounded through the empty inn.

“Do you intend to denounce him?”

“Arnau has always protected the friar. He is his brother, and he loves him.” Aledis recalled the two young lads who slept in Pere and Mariona’s kitchen; Arnau carrying blocks of stone, Joan studying. “I don’t want to harm Arnau, and yet now ... now I can’t even see him, and I don’t even know if he is aware that I am here and still love him ... They are going to try him. Perhaps, perhaps they will condemn him to ...”

Mar burst into tears once more.

“DON’T BE AFRAID I’m going to break the promise I made you, but I have to talk to him,” Aledis said to Francesca as she was leaving the dungeon.

Francesca tried to make out her features in the gloom. “Trust me,” she added. Arnau had stood up as soon as Aledis came back into the dungeon, but he had not called out to her. He simply listened in silence to the two women whispering together. Where was Joan? He had not been in for two days now, and Arnau had many things to ask him. He wanted him to find out who this old woman was. What was she doing there? Why had the jailer said she was his mother? What was happening with his trial? And his business affairs? And Mar? What had happened to Mar? Something was wrong. Ever since the last time Joan had visited him, the jailer had started treating him just like the rest again: all he got to eat was a crust of bread with stale water, and the bucket had disappeared.

Arnau saw the stranger move apart from the old woman. He started to slump down against the wall, but... but she was heading toward him.

He could see in the darkness that she was coming toward him, and he struggled to his feet. She stopped a few paces away, outside the range of the feeble light that dimly lit this end of the dungeon.

Arnau half closed his eyes to get a better glimpse of her.

“They’ve forbidden all visits to you,” he heard the unknown woman say.

“Who are you?” he asked. “How do you know?”

“We don’t have time, Arn ... Arnau.” She had called him Arnau! What if the jailer came ...

“Who are you?”

Why not tell him? Why not embrace him, offer him some comfort? She wouldn’t be able to bear it. Francesca’s words echoed through her mind. Aledis looked back at her, and then again at Arnau. The sea breeze, the beach, her youth, the long journey to Figueres ...

“Who are you?” she heard once more.

“That doesn’t matter. All I want to tell you is that Mar is in Barcelona, waiting for you. She loves you. She still loves you.”

Aledis could see Arnau slump back against the wall. She waited a few moments. There were noises in the passage. The jailer had given her only a few minutes. More noise. The key in the lock. Arnau heard it too and turned toward the door.

“Would you like me to give her a message?”

The door creaked open. The light from the torches in the passageway cast a stronger light on Aledis.

“Tell her that I too...” The jailer came into the dungeon. “I love her. Even though I cannot...”

Aledis turned on her heel and walked toward the door.

“What were you doing talking to the moneylender?” the fat jailer wanted to know as he locked the door behind her.

“He called me over as I was leaving.”

“It’s forbidden to talk to him.”

“I didn’t know that. I didn’t know he was the moneylender either. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t even go over to him.”

“The inquisitor has forbidden ...”

Aledis took out her purse and jingled the coins.

“I don’t want to see you here again,” said the jailer, taking the money. “If you come, you won’t leave.”

All this time, inside the dungeon, Arnau was desperately trying to understand what the strange woman had said to him: “She loves you. She still loves you.” But the memory of Mar was obscured by the light that the torches had cast on a pair of huge brown eyes. He recognized them. Where had he seen them before?

ALEDIS HAD TOLD her she would give him the message.

“Don’t worry,” she had insisted. “Arnau will know you are here, waiting for him.”

“Tell him I love him,” Mar shouted after Aledis as she began to cross Plaza de la Llana.

From the doorway, Mar saw the widow turn back and smile at her. Once Aledis was out of sight, Mar left the inn. She had thought about it on the journey from Mataró; again, when they had not been allowed to see Arnau; and that night over and over again. She left Plaza de la Llana and went part of the way down Calle Boria. She passed in front of the Capilla d’en Marcus and turned right. She came to a halt at the start of Calle de Montcada and stood for a few minutes looking at the noble palaces lining the street.

“My lady!” exclaimed Pere, Eleonor’s aged servant, as he opened one of the big gates to Arnau’s palace. “What a joy to see you again. It’s been such a long time ...” Pere fell silent, and nervously motioned her to step into the cobbled yard. “What brings you here?”

“I’ve come to see Dona Eleonor.”

Pere nodded and disappeared.

Mar was overwhelmed by her memories. Everything looked the same: the cool, clean yard with its gleaming cobblestones; the stables opposite; and to the right the impressive staircase leading up to the principal rooms. This was where Pere had headed.

He came back down the stairs looking disturbed.

“My lady will not see you.”

Mar looked up at the first floor of the palace. A shadow flitted behind one of the windows. When had she been in this situation before? When ... ? She looked up again at the windows.

“Once before,” she muttered up toward the windows, while Pere looked on, unable to offer any words of comfort, “I have lived through this scene. Arnau won that battle, Eleonor. I’m warning you: he has paid his debt to you in full.”

53

As THE SOLDIERS escorted him along the endless high corridors of the bishop’s palace, the noise of their swords and leather straps echoed all around them. The group marched along, the captain at its head, two soldiers in front of Arnau, and another two behind. When they had reached the top of the passage up from the dungeons, Arnau had halted to get used to the light streaming into the palace, until a sharp blow in the middle of his back forced him to keep pace with the soldiers.

Arnau passed by friars, priests, and scribes, all of them squeezing against the walls to let him and his guard through. Nobody had wanted to answer his question: the jailer had come into the dungeon and undone his chains. “Where are you taking me?” A Dominican in black crossed himself as he went by; another raised a crucifix. The soldiers marched on without paying any attention. For days now, Arnau had heard nothing from Joan or the brown-eyed woman: where had he seen those eyes before? He asked the old crone in the dungeon but got no reply. “Who was that woman?” he had shouted four times at least. Some of the shadows chained to the walls had groaned; others did not stir. Nor did the old woman, and yet, when the jailer pushed him out of the dungeon, Arnau thought he saw her shifting nervously.

Arnau bumped into the back of one of the soldiers in front of him. They had come to a halt outside an imposing double door. The soldier pushed him back, while the captain banged on the wooden panel. The doors opened, and the escort marched into a huge chamber. The walls were hung with rich tapestries. The soldiers accompanied Arnau to the center of the room, then returned to stand guard at the door.

Sitting behind an elaborately carved table, seven men were staring at him. Nicolau Eimerich, the grand inquisitor, sat in the middle, together with Berenguer d’Eril, the bishop of Barcelona. Both of them were wearing fine robes embroidered in gold. To the inquisitor’s left sat the Holy Office clerk; Arnau had seen him on occasion, but had never had any dealings with the man. On either side sat two black-robed Dominican friars, whom Arnau did not know.

Arnau looked steadily at the members of the tribunal until one of the friars turned away in disgust. Arnau raised a hand to his face: it was covered in a greasy beard that had grown during his days in the dungeon. His torn clothes had lost all their original color. He was barefoot, and his feet, hands, and nails were caked with black dirt. He stank. He himself found his smell unbearable.

Eimerich smiled when he saw Arnau reacting to his own sorry state.

“FIRST THEY WILL get him to swear on the four gospels,” Joan explained to Aledis as they sat round a table at the inn. “The trial could last days, or even months,” he had already told them, when they had urged him to go to the bishop’s palace. “It’s better to wait at the inn.”

“Will there be someone to defend him?” asked Mar.

Joan shook his head wearily. “He will be appointed a lawyer ... but that person is not allowed to defend him.”

“Why not?” the two women asked together.

“It is forbidden for lawyers and notaries,” Joan recited, “to aid heretics, to advise or support them, or to believe their word and defend them.” Mar and Aledis looked nonplussed. “That’s what the bull by Pope Innocent says.”

“What do they do then?” asked Mar.

“The lawyer’s task is to obtain the heretic’s voluntary confession; if he were to defend a heretic, he would be defending heresy.”

“I HAVE NOTHING to confess,” Arnau told the young priest who had been appointed as his lawyer.

“He’s an expert in civil and canon law,” said Nicolau Eimerich, “and also a passionate believer,” he added with a smile.

The priest spread his arms wide in a helpless gesture, in the same way he had done in the dungeon, when he had encouraged Arnau to confess his heresy. “You ought to do so,” he had said, “and put your faith in the tribunal’s mercy.” Now he repeated the same gesture—how often had he done that in the past as a lawyer for heretics?—and then at a sign from Eimerich, he withdrew from the chamber.

“AFTER THAT,” JOAN continued at Aledis’s prompting, “they will ask him to name his enemies.”

“Why is that?”

“If he were to name any of the witnesses accusing him, the tribunal could consider their testimony unsound.”

“But Arnau doesn’t know who denounced him,” Mar said.

“No, not at the moment. He might find out in due course ... if Eimerich concedes him that right. In fact, he is entitled to know,” said Joan, noticing how the two women reacted. “That is what Pope Boniface the Eighth decreed, but the pope is a long way away, and each inquisitor conducts his own trials as he sees fit.”

“I THINK MY wife hates me,” Arnau replied in answer to Eimerich’s question.

“Why should Doña Eleonor hate you?” the inquisitor insisted.

“Because we have no children.”

“Have you tried? Have you lain with her?”

Arnau had sworn on the four gospels. “No.”

The clerk’s quill copied all the words onto the pile of parchments in front of him. Nicolau Eimerich turned to the bishop.

“Can you name any other enemy?” asked Berenguer d’Eril.

“The nobles on my lands, in particular the thane of Montbui.” The clerk went on writing. “I have also judged many people as consul of the sea, but I consider I have always been just in my judgments.”

“Do you have any enemies among members of the Church?”

Why were they asking him that? He had always got on well with the Church.

“Apart from some of those here—”

“The members of this tribunal are impartial,” said Eimerich, interrupting him.

“I trust they are.” Arnau looked directly at the inquisitor.

“Anyone else?”

“As you well know, I have been a moneylender for many years, and perhaps—”

“It’s not for you,” Eimerich interrupted him again, “to speculate on who might or might not be your enemy, or for what reason. If you have enemies, you are to name them; if not, say nothing. Do you have enemies?”

“I do not think so.”

“WHAT THEN?” ALEDlS wanted to know.

“Then the inquisition proper begins.” Joan thought back to all the village squares, the chambers in rich houses, the sleepless nights ... but a heavy blow on the table in front of him brought him back to reality.

“What do you mean, Friar?” Mar shouted at him.

Joan sighed and looked her in the eye.

“The word ‘inquisition’ means a search. The inquisitor has to search out heresy and sin. Even when there have been accusations, the trial is not based on them or restricted to them. If the person on trial refuses to confess, they will search for the hidden truth.”

“How will they do that?” asked Mar.

Before he replied, Joan closed his eyes. “If you’re asking about torture, yes, that is one of the ways.”

“What will they do to him?”

“They might decide torture is not necessary.”

“What will they do to him?” insisted Mar.

“Why do you want to know?” said Aledis, taking her by the hand. “It will only torment you ... still further.”

“The law forbids death or the loss of any limb under torture,” Joan explained, “and suspected heretics may be tortured only once.”

Joan could see how the two women, their faces streaming with tears, sought some comfort in that. Yet he knew that Eimerich had found a way to make a mockery of this legal requirement. “Non ad modum iterationis sed continuationis,” he used to say, with a strange gleam in his eye; “Not repeatedly but continuously,” he translated for the novices who did not yet have a good grasp of Latin.

“What happens if they torture him and he still doesn’t confess?” asked Mar, after taking a deep breath.

“His attitude will be taken into account at the moment of handing down a sentence,” Joan said, without further explanation.

“Will it be Eimerich who sentences him?” asked Aledis.

“Yes, unless the sentence is life imprisonment or burning at the stake; in that case, he will need the bishop’s approval. And yet,” the friar went on, anticipating the women’s next question, “if the Inquisition considers that it is a complex matter, it has been known for them to consult the boni viri, between thirty and eighty people, not members of the Church, so that they can give their opinion as to the guilt of the accused, and the appropriate sentence. That means the trial drags on for months and months.”

“During which time Arnau would remain in jail,” said Aledis.

Joan nodded. The three of them sat in silence. The women were trying to take in everything they had heard; Joan was remembering another of Eimerich’s maxims: “The jail is to be forbidding, placed underground so that no light, and especially no sun or moonlight, may enter. It has to be harsh and tough, in order to shorten the prisoner’s life to the point that he faces death.”

FILTHY, IN RAGS, Arnau stood in the center of the chamber while the inquisitor and the bishop put their heads together and started whispering. The clerk took advantage of the interruption to tidy his papers. The four Dominicans continued to stare at the prisoner.

“How are you going to conduct the interrogation?” Berenguer d’Eril asked.

“We’ll start as usual, and as we progress, we’ll inform him what the charges are.”

“You’re going to tell him?”

“Yes. I think he is the sort of person who will react more to dialectic pressure than to a physical threat, although if necessary ...”

Arnau tried to withstand the looks from the black friars. One, two, three, four ... He shifted his weight onto his other foot and glanced again at the inquisitor and the bishop. They were still whispering to each other. The Dominicans, on the other hand, were observing him closely. The chamber was absolutely quiet apart from the inaudible whispering.

“He’s growing nervous,” said the bishop, glancing up at Arnau before turning back to the inquisitor.

“He is someone who is used to giving commands and being obeyed,” said Eimerich. “He needs to understand what the situation is; he has to accept the tribunal and its authority, and submit to it. Only then will he respond to interrogation. Humiliation is the first step.”

Bishop and inquisitor continued their conversation. Throughout the whole time, the Dominicans did not take their eyes off Arnau. Arnau tried to think of other things: of Mar, or Joan, but whenever he did so, he could feel one of the Dominican’s eyes clawing at him as if he had guessed what he was thinking. He shifted his weight time and again, felt his unruly beard and unkempt hair. In their gleaming gold robes, Berenguer d’Eril and Nicolau Eimerich sat comfortably behind the tribunal bench, glancing at him and continuing their discussion at their own leisure.

After a long pause, Nicolau Eimerich addressed him in a loud voice: “Arnau Estanyol, I know you have sinned.”

The trial proper had begun. Arnau took a deep breath.

“I do not know what you mean. I consider I have always been a good Christian. I have tried—”

“You yourself have admitted to this tribunal that you have not lain with your wife. Is that the attitude of a good Christian?”

“I cannot have carnal relations. I do not know if you are aware that I was already married before, and could ... could not have children then either.”

“Are you telling the tribunal you have a physical problem?” said the bishop.

“Yes.”

Eimerich studied Arnau for a few moments. He leaned forward on his elbows and then hid his mouth behind his hands. He turned to the clerk and whispered an order to him.

“Declaration by Juli Andreu, priest at Santa Maria de la Mar,” the clerk read out from one of his pieces of parchment. “‘I, Juli Andreu, priest at Santa Maria de la Mar, questioned by the grand inquisitor of Catalonia, do declare that approximately in the month of March in the year of our Lord 1364, I held a conversation with Arnau Estanyol, baron of Catalonia, at the request of his wife, Doña Eleonor, baroness, ward of King Pedro. She had expressed to me her concern at her husband’s neglect of his conjugal duties. I declare that Arnau Estanyol confided to me that he was not attracted to his wife, and that his body refused to allow him to enjoy relations with her. He said that it was not a physical problem, but that he could not force his body to desire a woman for whom he felt no attraction. He further said that he knew he was in a state of sin’”—Nicolau Eimerich’s eyes narrowed—“ and that for this reason he prayed as often as he could in Santa Maria and made substantial donations toward the construction of the church.”’

The chamber fell silent again. Nicolau stared fixedly on Arnau.

“Do you still affirm that you have a physical problem?” the inquisitor asked finally.

Arnau remembered his conversation with the priest, but could not remember exactly what... “I cannot recall what I said to him.”

“Do you admit that you had this conversation with Father Juli Andreu?”

“Yes.”

Arnau could hear the clerk’s quill scratching across the parchment.

“Yet you are calling into question the declaration by a man of God. What possible interest could the priest have in lying about you?”

“He might be mistaken. I do not remember exactly what was said ...”

“Are you saying that a priest who was not certain what he heard would make a declaration like the one Father Juli Andreu has made?”

“All I am saying is that he might be mistaken.”

“Father Andreu is not an enemy of yours, is he?” intervened the bishop.

“I have never considered him one.”

Nicolau spoke to the clerk again.

“Declaration by Pere Salvete, canon at Santa Maria de la Mar. ‘I, Pere Salvete, canon at Santa Maria de la Mar, questioned by the grand inquisitor of Catalonia, declare that at Easter in the year of our Lord 1367, while I was saying holy mass, the service was interrupted by a number of citizens of Barcelona who alerted us to the theft of a host by heretics. The mass was suspended, and the faithful left the church, with the exception of Arnau Estanyol, consul of the sea.’” “Go with your Jewish lover!” Eleonor’s words rang out in his head once more. Arnau shuddered, exactly as he had when he first heard them. He looked up. Nicolau was staring at him ... and smiling. Had he seen his reaction? The clerk was still reading the declaration: ‘“... and the consul answered that God could not oblige him to lie with her...’”

Nicolau silenced the scribe. The smile vanished.

“So is the canon lying too?”

“Go with your Jewish lover!” Why had he not let the clerk finish? What was Nicolau up to? “Your Jewish lover, your Jewish lover ...” The flames licking at Hasdai’s body, the silence, the enraged mob baying for justice, shouting words that were never properly spoken, Eleonor pointing at him, the bishop standing next to her, staring ... and Raquel clinging to him.

“Is the canon lying as well?”

“I have not accused anyone of lying,” said Arnau. He needed time to think.

“Do you deny God’s commandments? Do you object to the duties demanded of you as a Christian husband?”

“No ... no ...,” stammered Arnau.

“Well, then?”

“Well, then what?” “Do you deny God’s commandments?” Nicolau repeated, his voice rising.

His words reverberated from the stone walls of the vast chamber. Arnau’s legs felt heavy after all those days in the dungeon ...

“The tribunal could take your silence for a confession,” said the bishop.

“No, I don’t deny them.” His legs began to ache. “Why does the Holy Office take such an interest in my relations with Doña Eleonor? Is it a sin to—”

“Be careful, Estanyol,” the inquisitor cut in. “It is for the tribunal to ask the questions, not you.”

“Ask them, then.”

Nicolau could see Arnau moving unsteadily, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

“He’s beginning to feel pain,” he whispered in Berenguer d’Eril’s ear.

“Leave him to think about it,” replied the bishop.

They began to whisper together again. Arnau could sense the four Dominicans’ eyes fixed on him once more. His legs ached dreadfully, but he had to resist. He could not bow down before Nicolau Eimerich. What would happen if he collapsed to the floor? He needed ... a stone! A stone on his back, a long road to carry a stone for his Virgin. “Where are you now? Can these people really be your representatives? I was little more than a boy, and yet ...” Of course he could resist now. He had walked across all Barcelona with a stone that weighed more than he did, sweating, bleeding, with everyone’s shouts of encouragement ringing in his ears. Was there none of that strength left? Was a fanatic friar going to defeat him? Him? The boy bastaix admired by all the other boys in the city? Step by step, fighting his way along the path to Santa Maria, and then returning home to rest until the next day. His home ... those brown eyes, those big brown eyes. Then all at once, with a shudder that almost knocked him off his feet, he realized that the person who had spoken to him in the dungeon was Aledis.

When they saw Arnau suddenly straighten, Nicolau Eimerich and Berenguer d’Eril exchanged looks. For the first time, one of the Dominicans’ stares wavered, and he looked toward the center of the table.

“He’s not going to fall,” the bishop whispered nervously.

“Where do you satisfy your needs?” Nicolau asked loudly.

That explained why she had known his name. Her voice ... Yes, that was the voice he had heard so often on the slopes of Montjuic hill.

“Arnau Estanyol!” The inquisitor’s cry brought him back to the tribunal. “I asked how you satisfy your needs.”

“I do not understand your question.”

“You are a man. You have had no physical contact with your wife for years. It’s a very simple question: where do you satisfy your needs as a man?”

“For the same number of years, I have had no contact with any woman.”

He had answered without thinking. The jailer had said she was his mother.

“That’s a lie!” Arnau gave a start. “This tribunal has seen you embracing a heretic. Is that not contact with a woman?”

“Not the kind of contact you were referring to.”

“What can drive a man and a woman to embrace in public”—Nicolau waved his hands—“if not lasciviousness?”

“Grief.”

“What grief?” the bishop wanted to know.

“What grief?” Nicolau insisted when Arnau did not reply.

Arnau still said nothing. The flames from the funeral pyre lit the chamber. “Grief because a heretic who had profaned the sacred host had been executed?” the inquisitor insisted, pointing a bejeweled finger at him. “Is that the grief you feel as a true Christian? Because the weight of justice fell on a monster, a profaner, a wretch, a thief... ?”

“He did nothing!” Arnau shouted.

All the members of the tribunal, including the clerk, stirred in their seats.

“Those three men confessed their guilt. Why do you defend heretics? The Jews ...”

“Jews! Jews!” Arnau faced them defiantly. “What does the world have against them?”

“Do you not know?” asked the inquisitor, anger in his voice. “They crucified Jesus Christ!”

“Haven’t they paid enough for that?”

Arnau stared at the men ranged in front of him. They were all sitting up attentively.

“Are you saying they should be pardoned?” asked Berenguer d’Eril.

“Isn’t that what our Lord teaches us?”

“Their only salvation is through conversion! There can be no pardon for those who do not repent,” shouted Nicolau.

“You’re talking about something that happened more than thirteen hundred years ago. What do the Jews born in our time have to repent for? They are not to blame for what might have happened all those years ago.”

“Anyone who accepts the Jewish doctrine is making himself responsible for what his forebears did; he is taking on their guilt.”

“They only adopt ideas, beliefs, just like ...” At this, Nicolau and Berenguer gave a start. Why not? Was it not true? Didn’t that poor man who had died under a hail of insults and given his life for his community deserve the truth? “Just like us,” Arnau said in a loud, firm voice.

“You dare equate the Catholic faith with heresy?” roared the bishop.

“It is not for me to compare anything: I leave that to you, the men of God. All I said was—”

“We are well aware of what you said!” Nicolau Eimerich shouted. “You compared the one, true Christian faith with the heretical doctrines of the Jews.”

Arnau faced the tribunal. The clerk was still writing on his papers. Even the soldiers, standing stiffly to attention by the doors behind him, appeared to be listening to the scrape of his quill on the parchment. Nicolau smiled. The scratching pierced Arnau to the backbone, and a shudder ran through his entire body. The inquisitor saw it, and smiled even more broadly. “Yes,” he seemed to be saying, “that is what you said.”

“They are just like us,” Arnau repeated.

Nicolau silenced him with a wave of his hand.

The clerk continued writing for a few more moments. “Everything you said is recorded there,” the inquisitor’s look told Arnau. When the clerk raised his quill, Nicolau gave a satisfied smile.

“The session is suspended until tomorrow,” he cried, getting up from his seat.

MAR WAS TIRED of listening to Joan.

“Where are you going?” Aledis asked her. Mar merely looked at her. “There again? You’ve been every day, and you haven’t succeeded ...”

“I’ve succeeded in letting her know I’m here, and that I won’t forget what she did to me.” Joan hid his face. “I succeeded in catching sight of her through the window, and in letting her know that Arnau is mine. I saw it in her eyes, and I intend to remind her of it every day of her life. I intend to succeed by making her think every moment of the day that I was the one who won.”

Aledis watched her leave the inn. Mar took the same route as she had done every day since her arrival in Barcelona, and ended up outside the gates of the palace in Calle de Montcada. She pounded on the door knocker as hard as she could. Eleonor might refuse to see her, but she wanted her to know she was there.

As on every other day, the ancient servant peered at her through the peephole.

“My lady,” he said, “you know that Doña Eleonor ...”

“Open the door. I just want to see her, even if it is only through the window she hides behind.”

“But she does not want that.”

“Does she know who I am?”

Mar saw Pere turn toward the palace windows.

“Yes.”

Mar banged again on the knocker.

“My lady, do not insist, or Doña Eleonor will call the soldiers,” the old man advised her.

“Open up, Pere.”

“She won’t see you, my lady.”

Mar felt a hand on her shoulder, pulling her away from the door.

“Perhaps she will see me,” she heard, before she saw someone stepping in front of her.

“Guillem!” cried Mar, flinging herself on him.

“Do you remember me, Pere?” asked the Moor, with Mar clinging to him.

“How could I not remember?”

“Well, then, tell your mistress I want to see her.”

When the old man shut the peephole, Guillem took Mar by the waist and lifted her into the air. Laughing, Mar let him whirl her round. Then Guillem put her down, took a step back, and lifted her arms so that he could get a good look at her.

“My little girl,” he said, his voice choking with emotion. “How often I’ve dreamed of holding you in my arms again! But now you weigh a lot more. You’ve become a real ...”

Mar broke free, and ran to embrace him. “Why did you abandon me?” she asked, tears in her eyes.

“I was no more than a slave, child. What could a mere slave do?”

“You were like a father to me.”

“Am I not that anymore?”

“You always will be.”

Mar hugged Guillem tight. “You always will be,” thought the Moor. How many years had he wasted so far from here? He turned back to the door.

“Doña Eleonor will not see you either,” he heard from inside.

“Tell her she will be hearing from me.”

THE SOLDIERS TOOK him back down to the dungeons. As the jailer chained him up again, Arnau could not take his eyes off the dark bundle at the far end of the gloomy cell. He was still standing observing it when the jailer left.

“What do you have to do with Aledis?” he shouted at the old woman as soon as the jailer’s footsteps had faded in the distance.

Arnau thought he could make out a slight movement in the shadowy figure, but after that, nothing.

“What do you have to do with Aledis?” he repeated. “What was she doing here? Why does she visit you?”

The silence that was his only reply led him to think again of that pair of huge brown eyes.

“What do Aledis and Mar have to do with each other?” he begged the shadow.

No reply. Arnau tried at least to hear the old woman’s breathing, but the countless groans and snores from the other prisoners prevented him from making out any sound Francesca might be making. Arnau looked desperately along the walls of the dungeon: nobody paid him any heed.

As SOON AS he saw Mar come in accompanied by a splendidly dressed Moor, the innkeeper stopped stirring the big cooking pot hanging over the fire. He became even more troubled when he saw two slaves follow them in carrying Guillem’s possessions. “Why didn’t he go to the corn exchange, where all the merchants stay?” he thought as he went to receive them.

“This is truly an honor,” the innkeeper said, bowing to the ground before them.

Guillem waited for him to finish his exaggerated display. “Do you have rooms?”

“Yes. The slaves can sleep in the—”

“Rooms for three,” Guillem cut in. “One room for me, and another for the two of them.”

The innkeeper glanced at the two youngsters with big dark eyes and curly locks waiting silently behind their master.

“Yes,” he said. “If that is what you require. Follow me.”

“They will see to everything. Bring us some water.”

Guillem went with Mar to one of the tables. Only the two of them were left in the dining room.

“Did you say the trial began today?”

“Yes, although I couldn’t say for sure. I’m not sure about anything. I haven’t even been able to see him.”

Guillem heard the emotion choking Mar. He stretched out his hand to comfort her, but in the end withdrew it without touching her. She was no longer a little girl, and he ... well, he was only a Moor. Nobody ought to think ... It was enough to have whirled her round in the air outside Eleonor’s palace. Mar’s hand reached out and took his.

“I’m still the same. I always will be, for you.”

Guillem smiled. “What about your husband?”

“He died.”

Mar’s face did not show the least sign of distress. Guillem changed topics : “Have you done anything for Arnau?”

Mar half closed her eyes and twisted her lips. “What do you mean? There’s nothing we—”

“What about Joan? Joan is an inquisitor. Have you heard anything from him? Hasn’t he interceded on Arnau’s behalf?”

“That friar?” Mar laughed scornfully and said nothing; what was the point of telling him? Arnau’s situation was bad enough, and that was what had brought Guillem to Barcelona. “No. He hasn’t done anything. Besides, he cannot go against the grand inquisitor. He is at the inn with us ...”

“With us?”

“Yes. I’ve met a widow called Aledis. She’s staying here with her two daughters. She was a friend of Arnau’s when they were young. Apparently she happened to be in Barcelona when he was arrested. I sleep in their room. She’s a good woman. You’ll meet them all when we eat.”

Guillem squeezed her hand.

“Tell me about you,” said Mar.

As THE SUN climbed in the sky, Mar and Guillem told each other all that had happened to them in the six years since they had last met. Mar was careful not to mention Joan. The first to appear back at the inn were Teresa and Eulàlia. They were hot, but looked happy, although the smiles disappeared from their pretty faces as soon as they saw Mar and remembered that Francesca was still in jail.

They had walked all over the city, delighted at the new identity that being dressed as orphans ... and virgins ... had lent them. They had never before enjoyed such freedom, because according to the law, they always had to wear bright silks and colors to show everyone that they were prostitutes. “Shall we go in?” suggested Teresa, surreptitiously pointing to the doorway of San Jaume. She said it in a whisper, as though afraid lest the very idea arouse the ire of the whole of Barcelona. But nothing happened. The faithful inside the church paid them no attention, nor did the priest, whom they avoided looking at, pressing closer to each other as he went by.

Chattering and laughing, they went down Calle Boqueria toward the sea. If they had gone in the opposite direction, up Calle del Bisbe to Plaza Nova, they would have run into Aledis. She was standing outside the bishop’s palace, trying to recognize Arnau or Francesca in the shadows behind the stained-glass windows. She did not even know which one concealed the chamber where Arnau was being tried! Had Francesca been called to testify yet? Joan did not know anything about her. Aledis peered at window after window. She must have been, but what use was it knowing that, if Aledis could not do anything for her? Arnau was strong, and Francesca ... They did not know what she was like.

“What are you doing standing there?” Aledis turned and saw one of the soldiers of the Inquisition next to her. She had not seen him arrive. “What are you looking at so closely?”

Aledis ducked down and fled without a word. “You don’t know Francesca,” she thought as she ran away. “None of your tortures will be able to make her give away the secret she has kept hidden all her life.”

Before Aledis arrived back at the inn, Joan had appeared. He was wearing a clean habit borrowed from the Sant Pere de les Puelles monastery. When he saw Guillem sitting with Mar and Aledis’s two daughters, he came to a halt in the center of the dining room.

Guillem studied him. Was that a smile, or a look of distaste?

Joan himself would not have been able to say. What if Mar had told him about the kidnapping?

The way the friar had treated him when he was with Arnau flashed through Guillem’s mind, but this was no time to relive old quarrels, so he stood up to greet the newcomer. They all needed to unite to come to Arnau’s aid.

“How are you, Joan?” he asked, taking him by the shoulders. “What happened to your face?” he added, when he saw all the bruises.

Joan looked over at Mar, but her face held the same harsh, emotionless expression he had seen on it ever since he had gone in search of her. But no, Guillem could not be so cynical ...

“An unfortunate encounter,” said Joan. “It happens to friars as well.”

“I suppose you will have already excommunicated them,” joked Guillem as he led the friar over to the table. “Isn’t that what the Constitution of Peace and Truce establishes?” Joan and Mar exchanged glances. “Isn’t that what it says: ‘Anyone who disturbs the peace against unarmed priests’ ... You weren’t armed, were you, Joan?”

Guillem did not have the chance to notice how strained the relationship was between Mar and the friar, because at that moment Aledis came in. Guillem greeted her briefly; it was Joan he wanted to talk to.

“You’re an inquisitor,” he said. “What do you make of Arnau’s situation?”

“I think Nicolau wants to find him guilty, but he cannot have much against him. I think it may end with him having to wear the cloak of repentance and paying a hefty fine—that’s what most interests Eimerich. I know Arnau: he has never harmed anyone. Even if Eleonor has denounced him, they won’t be able to find—”

“What if Eleonor’s accusation were backed up by several priests?”

Joan looked startled. Would priests stoop to that kind of thing? “What do you mean?”

“That doesn’t matter,” said Guillem, remembering Jucef’s letter. “Tell me, though: what would happen if priests backed her up?”

Aledis did not hear Joan’s reply. Should she tell them what she knew? Could that Moor possibly help? He was rich ... and he looked ... Eulalia and Teresa were watching her. They had stayed silent as she had instructed them, but it seemed as though they were anxious to say something now. She had no need to ask them; she could see what they wanted. That meant ... Oh, what did it matter? Somebody had to do something, and that Moor ...

“There is quite a lot more,” she said, interrupting Joan’s conjectures as to what might happen.

The two men and Mar all turned their attention to her.

“I have no intention of telling you how I found out, and I have no wish to talk about this again once I have said what I have to say. Do you agree?”

“What do you mean?” asked Joan.

“It’s perfectly clear, Friar,” snapped Mar.

Guillem looked at her with surprise: why did she speak to Joan like that? He turned to the friar, but he was staring at the floor.

“Go on, Aledis. We agree,” said Guillem.

“Do you remember the two noblemen who are staying at the inn?”

When he heard the name Genis Puig, Guillem butted in and stopped her.

“He has a sister called Margarida,” Aledis told him.

Guillem raised his hands to his face. “Are they still here?” he asked.

Aledis nodded, and continued telling them what her girls had discovered ; the favors Eulàlia had granted Genis Puig had not been in vain. Once he had exhausted his drunken passion on her, he had been more than happy to tell her of all the charges Arnau was facing.

“They say Arnau burned his father’s body ... ,” said Aledis, “but I can’t believe ...”

Joan was about to retch. All the others turned toward him. The friar had his hand over his mouth, as though he were choking. The darkness, Bernat’s body hanging from the makeshift scaffold, the flames ...

“What do you have to say now, Joan?” he heard Guillem asking him.

“They will put him to death,” he managed to say before he ran out of the inn, still covering his mouth with his hand.

Joan’s verdict floated in the air around them. None of them dared look at one another.

“What has happened between you and Joan?” Guillem whispered to Mar after a while, when the friar had still not reappeared.

He was only a slave ... What could a mere slave do? Guillem’s words rattled round Mar’s brain. If she told him ... They needed to be united! Arnau needed them all to fight for him ... including Joan.

“Nothing,” she said. “You know we never got on very well.” She avoided looking at him.

“Will you tell me someday?” insisted Guillem.

Mar looked down at the table.

54

THE MEMBERS OF the tribunal were already assembled: the four Dominicans and the clerk sitting behind the desk, the soldiers on guard at the door, and Arnau, as filthy as he had been the previous day, standing at the center of the chamber. All eyes were on him.

A short while later Nicolau Eimerich and Berenguer d’Eril came in. Everything about them spoke of luxury and arrogance. The soldiers snapped alert, and the others stood until the two men had taken their seats.

“The session is open,” declared Nicolau. “May I remind you,” he added, addressing Arnau, “that you are still under oath.”

“That man,” the bishop had warned him on their way into the tribunal, “will give away more because of the oath he has taken than from any fear of being tortured.”

“Please read the prisoner’s last declaration,” said Nicolau to the clerk.

“‘They only adopt ideas and beliefs just like us.’” Arnau was struck by his own words. All night he had been unable to get the images of Mar and Aledis out of his mind, and had gone over what he had said time and again. Nicolau had not allowed him to explain what he meant, but then again, what could he say? What could he tell those hunters of heretics about his relations with Raquel and her family? The clerk was still reading out his declaration. He must not allow the questions to focus on Raquel: she and her family had suffered more than enough with the death of Hasdai. The last thing they needed was to have the Inquisition on their heels again ...

“So you think that the Christian faith is no more than a few ideas and beliefs, which men are free to accept or not as they see fit?” Berenguer d’Eril asked him. “How dare a mere mortal judge God’s designs?”

Why shouldn’t he? Arnau looked steadily at Nicolau. “Aren’t you two mere mortals as well?” he thought. They would burn him. They would burn him just as they had burned Hasdai and so many others. He shuddered.

“I expressed myself badly,” he said finally.

“How would you care to express yourself then?” asked Nicolau.

“I’m not sure. I do not have your learning. All I can say is that I believe in God, that I am a good Christian, and that I have always followed His commandments.”

“Do you think that burning your father’s body is following God’s commandments?” shouted the inquisitor, rising to his feet and thumping the table with both hands.

HURRYING ALONG IN the shadows, Raquel ran to her brother’s house as they had agreed.

“Sahat,” was all she said when she stood on the threshold.

Guillem got up from the table he was sharing with Jucef.

“I’m sorry, Raquel.”

Her only reply was a twist of the mouth. Guillem was a few steps away from her, but when she raised her arms in a helpless gesture, he strode over and embraced her. Guillem pressed her to him and tried to comfort her, but words failed him. “Let the tears flow, Raquel,” he thought. “Let them put out the fire still burning in your eyes.”

After a few moments, Raquel pulled away from Guillem and dried her tears.

“You’ve come for Arnau, haven’t you?” she asked once she had regained her composure. “You must help him,” she added when Guillem nodded. “We can’t do much without making things even more difficult for him.”

“I was just telling your brother that I need a letter of introduction to the royal court.”

Raquel looked inquiringly at her brother, who was still seated at the table.

“We’ll get one,” said Jucef. “The infante Don Juan, his retinue, the other members of the court, and prominent men from all over the kingdom are meeting in Barcelona to discuss Sardinia. It’s an excellent opportunity.”

“What are you planning, Sahat?” asked Raquel.

“I don’t know yet. You wrote to me,” he said, turning to Jucef, “that the king is at loggerheads with the grand inquisitor.” Jucef nodded. “What about his son?”

“He’s even angrier with him,” said Jucef. “The infante is a patron of art and culture. He loves music and poetry. He invited many writers and philosophers to his court in Girona. None of them can accept the way Eimerich has attacked Ramon Llull. Catalan thinkers have little regard for the Inquisition: early this century fourteen works by the doctor Arnau de Vilanova were condemned; more recently the work of Nicolás de Calabria was declared heresy by Eimerich himself, and now they are attacking someone as important as Ramon Llull. It’s as though they despise anything Catalan. Nowadays, only a few people dare write, out of fear of the interpretation Eimerich might put on their words; Nicolas de Calabria ended up at the stake. In addition, if anyone could put a stop to the grand inquisitor’s plan to extend his jurisdiction to the Catalan Jewries, that person is the infante. Don’t forget, he lives on the taxes we pay him. He will listen to you,” said Jucef, “but make no mistake, he will not want to confront the Inquisition openly.”

Guillem took silent note of all this.

BURNING THE BODY?

Nicolau Eimerich was still standing, hands pressed on the table, staring at Arnau. He was purple with rage.

“Your father,” he growled, “was a devil who roused the people to rebellion. That is why he was executed, and why you burned him.”

Nicolau ended by pointing an accusing finger at Arnau.

How did he know? There was only one person who knew what he had done ... The clerk’s quill scratched its way across the page. It was impossible. Not Joan ... Arnau could feel his legs buckling beneath him.

“Do you deny having burned your father’s body?” asked Berenguer d’Eril.

Joan could not have told anyone!

“Do you deny it?” Nicolau insisted, raising his voice.

The faces of the tribunal in front of him became a blur. Arnau thought he was going to be sick.

“We were hungry!” he shouted. “Do you know what it feels like to be hungry?” He saw his father’s purple face with its tongue lolling out, superimposed on those of the people watching him now. Joan? Why hadn’t he been to see him again? “We were hungry!” he shouted. Arnau could hear his father’s words: “If I were you, I wouldn’t accept it ...” “Have you ever been hungry?”

Arnau tried to throw himself on Nicolau, who was still standing there arrogantly challenging him, but before he could reach the table, he was grabbed by the soldiers and dragged back to the center of the chamber.

“Did you burn your father as a devil?” Nicolau shouted again.

“My father was not a devil!” Arnau replied, shouting and struggling to free himself from the soldiers.

“But you did burn his body.”

“Why did you do it, Joan? You are my brother, and Bernat ... Bernat always loved you like a son.” Arnau lowered his head and went limp in the soldiers’ hands. “Why?”

“Did your mother tell you to do it?”

Arnau could barely lift his head.

“Your mother is a witch who transmits the Devil’s sickness,” said the bishop.

What were they talking about?

“Your father killed a boy in order to set you free. Do you confess it?” howled Nicolau.

“What—” Arnau started to say.

“You,” Nicolau interrupted him, “you also killed a Christian boy. What were you planning to do with him?”

“Did your parents tell you to kill him?”

“Did you want his heart?” said Nicolau.

“How many other boys have you killed?”

“What are your relations with heretics?”

The inquisitor and the bishop assailed him with questions. Your father, your mother, boys, murders, hearts, heretics, Jews ... Joan! Arnau’s head fell onto his chest again. His whole body was quivering.

“Do you confess?” Nicolau rounded on him.

Arnau did not move. His interrogators were silent, as he hung in the arms of the soldiers. Eventually, Nicolau signaled to them to take him out of the chamber. Arnau could feel them dragging him away.

“Wait!” came the order from the inquisitor just as they were opening the doors. The guards turned back to him. “Arnau Estanyol!” he shouted. And again: “Arnau Estanyol!”

Arnau slowly raised his head and peered at Nicolau.

“You can take him out,” said the inquisitor once he had met Arnau’s gaze. “Take this down,” Arnau heard him instructing the clerk as he was bundled out of the room. “The prisoner did not deny any of the accusations made by this tribunal, and has avoided confessing by pretending to have fainted, the falseness of which has been discovered when, no longer under oath in the tribunal, the prisoner responded to calls for him to answer his name.”

The sound of the scratching quill followed Arnau all the way to the dungeons.

DESPITE THE INNKEEPER’S protests, Guillem gave instructions to his slaves to organize his move to the corn exchange, which was close to the Estanyer Inn. He left Mar behind, but he could not risk being recognized by Genis Puig. The slaves only shook their head when the innkeeper tried desperately to get them and their rich master to stay on. “What use to me are nobles who won’t pay?” he growled as he counted out the money the slaves had given him.

Guillem went straight from the Jewry to his new lodgings. None of the merchants staying in Barcelona knew of his former connections with Arnau.

“I have a business in Pisa,” he told a Sicilian trader who sat down to eat at the same table and showed an interest in him.

“What brings you to Barcelona?” he asked.

He almost said, “A friend who is in trouble,” then thought better of it. The Sicilian was a short, bald man with rough-hewn features. He said his name was Jacopo Lercado. Guillem had discussed the situation in Barcelona thoroughly with Jucef, but it was always a good idea to get another opinion.

“Years ago I had good contacts in Catalonia, so I thought I would take advantage of a trip to Valencia to see how things are here now.”

“There’s not much to see,” said the Sicilian, continuing to eat.

Guillem waited for him to go on, but the other man seemed more interested in his stew. It was obvious he would not say anything more unless he thought he was talking to someone who knew as much about business as he did.

“I’ve noticed the situation has changed a lot since I was last here. There don’t seem to be many peasants in the markets: their stalls are empty. I can remember when, years ago, the inspector had to struggle to keep order among all the traders and peasants selling produce.”

“The inspector has no work to do these days,” said the Sicilian with a smile. “The peasants don’t produce, and don’t bring anything to sell. Epidemics have decimated the countryside, the land is poor, and even the landowners no longer plant crops. Many peasant farmers have been heading to where you came from: Valencia.”

“I’ve visited some people I knew before.” The Sicilian looked up from his food. “They no longer want to risk their money in commerce: they prefer to buy the city’s debt. They live on the interest. They have told me that nine years ago, Barcelona’s debt was around a hundred and sixty-nine thousand pounds; nowadays it must be nearer two hundred thousand, and it’s still increasing. The city can no longer pay the interest on the different loans it has given as guarantee for the debt; it is facing ruin.”

Guillem reflected on the endless debate among Christians about whether it was permitted to earn money through interest. With the collapse of trade, and the consequent lack of money from commerce, the city authorities had once again sought to get round the prohibition by creating these new types of loans, which entailed the rich lending them money in return for a guarantee of a yearly payment—which obviously included interest. Repayment of the property levy implied handing over a third more than the original sum. The advantage of these loans was that there was much less risk than that involved in commercial ventures... as long as Barcelona could pay.

“But until that moment of ruin arrives,” said the Sicilian, “there is a great opportunity to make money in Catalonia ...”

“By selling,” Guillem intervened.

“In the main, yes,” said the Sicilian. Guillem could tell he trusted him more now. “But you can also buy, provided you do so in the proper currency. The parity between the gold florin and silver croat is a complete fiction; it has nothing to do with the rate that you can get in foreign exchanges. Silver is pouring out of Catalonia, yet the king is determined to defend the value of his gold florin against the market; his attitude is going to cost him dearly.”

“Why do you think he persists in it then?” Guillem asked. “King Pedro has always behaved very sensibly ...”

“It’s purely out of political interest,” said Jacopo. “The florin is a royal currency: it is minted in Montpellier under his direct control. But the croat is minted in cities like Barcelona and Valencia under licence. The king is determined to support the value of his own currency even if it’s a mistake—but for us, his obstinacy is very fortunate. He has put parity between gold and silver at thirteen times more than its real value in other markets!”

“What about the royal coffers?”

That was what most interested Guillem.

“Thirteen times overvalued!” laughed the Sicilian trader. “The king is still fighting Castille, although it seems the war may soon be over. King Pedro the Cruel is having problems with his barons, who are deserting him in favor of the House of Trastámara. Pedro the Ceremonious can count on support only from the cities and, apparently, the Jews. The war with Castille has ruined him. Four years ago, the Monzón parliament provided him with two hundred and sixty thousand pounds for his war chest in return for fresh concessions for nobles and cities. The king is spending the money on the war, but he is giving up privileges that might affect him in the future. And now there’s a rebellion in Corsica ... if you are owed money by the king, you can forget it.”

Guillem’s attention wandered from what the Sicilian was saying. He merely nodded and smiled when it seemed appropriate. So the king was ruined, and Arnau was one of his biggest creditors. When Guillem had left Barcelona, Arnau had lent the royal house more than ten thousand pounds: how much could it be now? The king had probably not even been able to pay off the interest on the cheap loans. “They will put him to death.” Joan’s words came back into Guillem’s mind. “Nicolau will use Arnau to help strengthen his position,” Jucef had told him. “The king does not pay any revenues to the pope, and Eimerich has promised him part of Arnau’s fortune.” Would the king want to owe money to a pope who had just backed a revolt in Corsica by denying the rights of the crown of Aragon? But how could he get the king to stand up to the Inquisition?

“YOUR PROPOSAL INTERESTS us.”

The infante’s voice was lost in the vastness of the Tinell chamber in Barcelona’s royal palace. He was only sixteen, but he had just presided, in the name of his father, over the parliament that dealt with the revolt in Sardinia. Guillem glanced surreptitiously at the king’s heir, seated on the throne flanked by his two counsellors, Joan Fernández d’Heredia and Francesc de Perellós, both of whom were standing. It was said that the infante was weak, and yet, two years earlier, he had found the strength to try, pass sentence on, and execute the man who had been his tutor since birth: Bernat de Cabrera. And after ordering his beheading in Zaragoza market square, he had been obliged to send the viscount’s head to his father, King Pedro.

The same evening he had spoken to the Sicilian trader, Guillem had met with Francesc de Perellós. The counsellor had listened closely to what he had to say, and then asked him to wait behind a small door. When after many minutes he was told to come in, Guillem found himself in the most imposing chamber he had ever seen: it was an airy room more than thirty paces wide, with six long arches that almost reached the floor. The walls were bare apart from the torches that lit the chamber. The infante and his counsellors were waiting for him at the far end.

When he was still several steps away from the throne, Guillem knelt down on one knee.

“Yet remember,” said the infante, “we cannot oppose the Inquisition.”

Guillem waited until Francesc de Perellós nodded for him to speak.

“You would not have to, my liege.”

“So be it,” the infante ruled, then stood up and left the chamber, accompanied by Joan Fernández d’Heredia.

“You may rise,” Francesc de Perellós told Guillem. “When can you arrange this?”

“Tomorrow, if possible. If not, the day after.”

“I will inform the magistrate.”

GUILLEM LEFT THE royal palace as night was falling. He stared up at the clear Mediterranean sky and took a deep breath. There was still a lot to do.

That same afternoon, when he was still talking to Jacopo the Sicilian, he had received a message from Jucef: “The counsellor Francesc de Perellós will see you today in the royal palace, when the parliament has finished.” He knew how to interest the infante. It was easy: he would cancel the substantial debts that the Catalan crown owed Arnau, thus making sure they did not end up in the hands of the pope. But how could he set Arnau free and yet avoid the duke of Girona having to confront the Inquisition?

Before he headed for the royal palace, Guillem had gone for a walk. His steps led him in the direction of Arnau’s countinghouse. It was boarded up: Nicolau Eimerich must have had all his account books confiscated in order to avoid any further sales. All Arnau’s assistants had gone. Guillem looked toward Santa Maria, still surrounded in scaffolding. How was it possible that someone who had given everything for a church like that ... ? He walked on to the Consulate of the Sea, and then the beach.

“How is your master?” he heard behind him.

Guillem turned, and saw a bastaix carrying an enormous sack on his shoulders. Years earlier, Arnau had lent him money, which he had returned coin by coin. Guillem shrugged and twisted his mouth. Almost immediately, he was surrounded by a line of bastaixos who were unloading a ship. “What’s happened to Arnau?” he heard. “How can they accuse him of heresy?” That man had borrowed money from Arnau as well ... for his daughter’s dowry. How many of them had turned to Arnau for help? “If you see him,” said another bastaix, “tell him we’ve lit a candle for him beneath the statue in Santa Maria. We make sure it never goes out.” Guillem tried to explain he knew nothing, but they all launched into attacks on the Inquisition before continuing on their way.

Emboldened by their passion, Guillem strode off determinedly to the royal palace.

Now, with Santa Maria silhouetted against the night sky, Guillem found himself once more outside Arnau’s countinghouse. He needed the bill of payment that the Jew Abraham Levi had once signed, which he himself had hidden behind a stone in the wall. The door to the countinghouse was shut, but there was a window on the ground floor that had never closed properly. Guillem strained his ears: there was no one around. The window grated in the nighttime silence. Guillem froze. After all, he was a Moor, an infidel entering the house of a prisoner of the Inquisition in the middle of the night. If he were caught, the fact that he had been baptized a Christian would be of little help. But the nighttime sounds around him made him realize that the universe did not depend on him: the lapping of the waves, the creaking of the scaffolding at Santa Maria, babies crying, men shouting at their wives ...

He opened the window wider and slipped inside. Abraham Levi’s fictitious deposit had allowed Arnau to put the money to good use and earn healthy profits, but each time he did so, he made sure that a quarter of the earnings were noted down in Levi’s name. Guillem waited until his eyes grew used to the darkness and the moonlight could guide him.

Guillem knelt by the wall. It was the second stone from the right. He began to pull at it. He had never confessed to Arnau about that first operation he had done behind his back, but in his name. The stone would not budge. “Don’t worry,” he remembered Hasdai telling Arnau once when he had mentioned the Jew, “I have instructions for the deposit to remain as it is. Don’t worry about it.” When Arnau turned to look at them, Hasdai stared at Guillem, who limited himself to shrugging and sighing. The stone began to move. No. Arnau would never have used money that came from the sale of slaves. The stone came away, and behind it Guillem soon found the document, carefully wrapped in a cloth. He did not bother reading it, because he remembered exactly what it said. He pushed the stone back and went back to the window. He could hear nothing unusual outside, so he slipped out again, and left Arnau’s countinghouse.

55

THE SOLDIERS HAD to come into the dungeon to get him. Two of rhem lifted him under the arms and dragged him out, while Arnau JL struggled to stand. His ankles banged against the stairs up to the palace; he did not have the strength to make his own way. He did not even notice the monks and priests peering at him as he was led to face Nicolau again. Arnau had not been able to sleep for a moment: how could Joan have denounced him?

When he had been thrown back into the dungeon the previous evening, Arnau had wept, cried out, and flung himself at the wall. Why Joan? And if Joan had denounced him, what role was Aledis playing in all this? And the old woman in the dungeon with him? Aledis had reason to hate him: he had abandoned her and then refused to receive her. Could she be in league with Joan? Had they really gone to fetch Mar? If that were so, why hadn’t she visited him? Was it so hard to bribe a simple jailer?

Francesca listened to him weeping and crying out. When she heard her son in such pain, her body shrank still further. She would have loved to look at him and respond, to console him even if she had to lie. “You won’t be able to stand it,” she had warned Aledis. But what about her? Would she be able to bear this situation for much longer? Arnau went on howling his anguish to the world, and Francesca crept closer to the dank walls of the prison.

THE DOORS TO the chamber opened and Arnau was pushed in. The members of the tribunal were all assembled. The soldiers dragged him to the center of the room and let him go: Arnau fell to his knees with his legs splayed out beneath him. He heard Nicolau’s voice breaking the silence, but could not understand a word of what he was saying. What did he care what this friar could do to him, when his own brother had already passed sentence on him? He had no one. He had nothing.

“Make no mistake,” the bailiff had told him when he tried to buy him off with a small fortune, “you don’t have any money anymore.” Money! Money had been the reason the king had married him to Eleonor ; money was behind his wife’s accusations; it was money that had led to his imprisonment. Could it have been money that led Joan to... ?”

“Bring in the mother!”

The barked command stirred a response in Arnau’s befuddled brain.

MAR AND ALEDIS, with Joan a few paces away, were waiting outside the bishop’s palace in Plaza Nova. “The infante will see my master this evening,” was all that one of Guillem’s slaves had told them the day before. This morning, at first light, the same slave had appeared and told them his master wanted them to go to the Plaza Nova.

So the three of them waited, wondering what reasons there could be for Guillem to call them there like that.

ARNAU HEARD THE doors opening behind him. Then he heard the soldiers come back in and approach the center of the chamber close by him. After that, they marched back to stand guard at the doors.

He could sense her presence. He saw her bare, cracked feet, filthy and bleeding. Nicolau and the bishop smiled when they saw Arnau apparently fascinated by his mother’s feet. He turned to look at her properly. Although he was on his knees and she was standing, she was so shrunken that she was only a hand taller than he. The time she had spent in the dungeons had left its mark: her sparse gray hair was matted and stiff; her profile as she stared at the tribunal bench was a mass of slack skin. The eye in the side of her face he could see was sunken so deep into what looked like purple, mottled flesh that Arnau could scarcely make it out.

“Francesca Esteve,” said Nicolau, “do you swear on the four gospels?”

The old woman’s strong, firm voice took everyone by surprise. “I swear,” she said, “but you are wrong; my name is not Francesca Esteve.”

“What is it then?” asked Nicolau.

“My name is Francesca, but not Esteve. It’s Ribes. Francesca Ribes,” she said, raising her voice.

“Do we have to remind you that you are under oath?” the bishop said.

“No. On my oath, I am telling the truth. My name is Francesca Ribes.”

“Are you not the daughter of Pere and Francesca Esteve?” Nicolau insisted.

“I never knew who my parents were.”

“Did you contract marriage with Bernat Estanyol in the lands of the lord of Navarcles?”

Arnau stiffened. Bernat Estanyol?

“No. I have never been in such a place and have never been married.”

“And did you not bear a son by the name of Arnau Estanyol?”

“No. I know of no such Arnau Estanyol.”

Arnau turned to her again.

Nicolau Eimerich and Berenguer d’Eril whispered together. Then the inquisitor addressed the clerk.

“Listen,” he told Francesca.

“Declaration by Jaume de Bellera, lord of Navarcles,” the clerk began to read.

When he heard the name Bellera, Arnau’s eyes narrowed. His father had told him about that family. He listened closely to the supposed story of his life, the story cut short by his father’s death. The way his mother had been called to the castle to suckle Llorenç de Bellera’s new son. A witch? He heard Jaume de Bellera’s version of how his mother had run away when soon afterward he had begun to suffer from the Devil’s sickness.

“Arnau Estanyol’s father, Bernat,” the clerk went on, “succeeded in eluding the guard after he had killed an innocent youth, and then abandoned his lands and fled to Barcelona with his son. Once in the city, they were taken in by the family of Grau Puig, the merchant. The witness is aware that the witch became a common whore. Arnau Estanyol is the son of a witch and a murderer.”

“What do you have to say to that?” Nicolau asked Francesca.

“That you’ve got the wrong whore,” the old woman said coldly.

“You!” shouted the bishop, pointing an accusing finger at her. “How dare you challenge the Inquisition’s evidence?”

“I’m not here for being a whore,” Francesca said, “and that’s not what I’m being tried for. Saint Augustine wrote that only God can judge fallen women.”

The bishop went bright red with rage. “How dare you quote Saint Augustine? How ... ?”

Berenguer d’Eril went on ranting and raving, but Arnau was no longer listening. Saint Augustine wrote that God would judge fallen women. Saint Augustine said ... Years ago ... in an inn at Figueres, he had heard those words from a common whore ... Hadn’t she been called Francesca? Saint Augustine wrote ... Could it be?

Arnau turned to look at Francesca: he had seen her only twice in his life, but both were crucial moments. Everyone in the tribunal saw how he reacted to her.

“Look at your son!” shouted Eimerich. “Do you deny you are his mother?”

Arnau and Francesca heard his accusation reverberate from the chamber walls. He was on his knees, staring at her; she was looking ahead of her, straight at the grand inquisitor.

“Look at him!” Nicolau raged, pointing at Arnau.

Faced with all the hatred of that accusatory finger, Francesca’s entire body quivered. Only Arnau noticed how the skin of her neck pulled back almost imperceptibly. She did not take her eyes off the inquisitor.

“You will confess,” Nicolau assured her, rolling his tongue round the word. “I can assure you, you will confess.”

“VIA FORA!”

The cry disturbed the peace and quiet of Plaza Nova. A boy ran across the square, shouting the call to arms: “Via fora! Via fora!” Aledis and Mar looked at each other, and then at Joan.

“The bells aren’t ringing,” he replied with a shrug.

Yet the cry of “Via fora!” echoed around the city. Curious citizens came out into Plaza del Blat, expecting to see the Sant Jordi banner next to the stone in the center. Instead of that, they found two bastaixos armed with crossbows, who led them to Santa Maria.

In the square outside the church, the Virgin of the Sea had been hoisted on her dais onto the shoulders of more bastaixos, who were waiting for the people of the city to gather round. Beside her, the guild aldermen had hoisted their banner and were receiving the steady stream of people coming down Calle de la Mar. One of them had the key to the Sacred Urn round his neck. The crowd round the Virgin grew and grew. To one side, outside Arnau’s countinghouse, Guillem was watching and listening closely.

“The Inquisition has seized a citizen of Barcelona, the consul of the sea,” one of the guild aldermen explained.

“But the Inquisition ...,” someone said.

“The Inquisition is not part of our city.” One of the aldermen interrupted him. “It is not subject to the king either. It does not take orders from the Council of a Hundred, or the city magistrate, or the bailiff. None of them chooses its members—that is done by the pope, who is a foreigner and is interested only in our money. How can they accuse someone who has devoted his life to the Virgin of the Sea of heresy?”

“They only want our consul’s money!” shouted someone in the crowd.

“They’re lying so they can get their hands on our money!”

“They hate the Catalan people,” another alderman said.

The news spread like wildfire among all those gathered in the square. Angry shouts could soon be heard along Calle de la Mar.

Guillem saw the aldermen explaining what was going on to the leaders of the other guilds. Who wasn’t fearful about what might happen to their money? Although of course the Inquisition was to be feared as well. It was an absurd accusation ...

“We have to defend our privileges,” shouted one of those who had been talking to the bastaixos.

The crowd grew agitated. Soon swords, crossbows, and fists were being waved in the air, to more cries of, “Via fora!”

The noise grew louder and louder. Guillem saw some city councillors arrive. He immediately went over to the group talking together round the statue.

“What about the king’s soldiers?” he heard one of the newcomers ask.

The alderman repeated the exact words that Guillem had suggested to him: “Let’s go to Plaza del Blat and see what the magistrate does.”

Guillem left them. For a brief moment, he stared at the small stone image the bastaixos were carrying. “Help him!” he said in silent prayer.

The group set off. “To Plaza del Blat!” was the cry.

Guillem joined the stream of people flocking back up Calle de la Mar to the square where the magistrate’s palace stood. Few among them knew that the aim of the host was to determine what attitude the magistrate would adopt, so that while the Virgin on her dais was placed in the center of the square where usually the banner of Sant Jordi and the other guild banners would hang, Guillem had no difficulty in getting close to the palace itself.

In the center of the square, the councillors and guild aldermen gathered round the Virgin and the pennant; all had their eyes fixed on the palace. When the rest of the crowd realized what was happening, they all fell silent and turned toward the palace as well. Guillem could feel the tension rising. Had the infante kept his side of the bargain? The king’s soldiers were lined up, swords drawn, between the crowd and the palace. The magistrate appeared at one of the windows, squinted down at the people gathered below him, and disappeared again. A few moments later, a captain appeared in the square. Thousands of pairs of eyes, Guillem’s included, turned to him.

“The king cannot intervene in the affairs of the city of Barcelona,” the captain shouted. “It is for the city to decide whether to call the host or not.”

With that, he ordered the line of soldiers to withdraw.

The crowd watched as the soldiers filed out of the square and disappeared beneath the old city gate. Before they had all left the square, a huge cry of, “Via fora!” rent the air. Guillem trembled.

JUST AS NICOLAU Eimerich was about to order that Francesca be taken back to the dungeons to be tortured, the sound of bells interrupted him. First came San Jaume, the call for the host to gather, and then one by one all the other church bells in the city began to chime. Most of the priests in Barcelona’s churches were faithful followers of Ramon Llull’s doctrines, and so were not opposed to the lesson the city intended to teach the Inquisition.

“The host?” the grand inquisitor asked inquiringly of Berenguer d’Eril.

The bishop shrugged.

The Virgin of the Sea still stood in the center of Plaza del Blat, waiting for the banners of all the guilds to join that of the bastaix. Already, though, many people were heading for the bishop’s palace.

Aledis, Mar, and Joan could hear them approaching. Then all of a sudden, cries of “Via fora” began to fill Plaza Nova.

Nicolau Eimerich and Berenguer d’Eril went over to one of the leaded windows. When they opened it, they saw more than a hundred people down below, shouting and waving their weapons in the air. The shouts grew louder when they spied the two provosts.

“What’s going on?” Nicolau asked the guard, starting back from the window.

“Barcelona has come to set its consul of the sea free,” a boy shouted when Joan asked the same question.

Aledis and Mar closed their eyes and set their mouths in a firm line. They felt for each other’s hand, and stared up with tear-filled eyes at the window that had remained half-open.

“Go and fetch the magistrate!” Nicolau ordered the captain of the guard.

With no one paying any attention to him, Arnau got up from his knees and took Francesca by the arm.

“What made you tremble?” he asked her.

Francesca just managed to stop a teardrop from falling down her cheek, but she could not prevent her mouth from twisting in pain.

“Forget me,” she said, her voice choking with emotion.

The uproar outside the windows made all further conversation or thought almost impossible. The host had assembled and was heading for Plaza Nova. It passed beneath the old city gate, and on past the magistrate’s palace. He watched it go by from one of his windows. Then the men marched along Calle de los Seders up to Calle Boqueria and the church of San Jaume, whose bells were still ringing out, and then up Calle del Bisbe to the bishop’s palace.

Still clutching each other by the hand, Mar and Aledis rushed to the end of the street. Everyone was pressed up against the walls to leave room for the host to go by: in the vanguard was the banner of the bastaix, then the Virgin under her canopy, and behind her in a riot of color came the banners of all the other guilds of the city.

THE MAGISTRATE REFUSED to see the Inquisition’s envoy.

“The king cannot interfere in the host of Barcelona’s affairs,” the king’s captain told him.

“But they will attack the bishop’s palace,” said the other man, still panting.

The royal officer shrugged. “Do you use that sword to torture with?” he was on the point of asking him. The Inquisition envoy saw his look, and the two men glared at each other.

“I’d like to see you measure it against a Castillian blade or a Moorish scimitar,” the soldier said, spitting between the other man’s feet.

Meanwhile, the Virgin’s statue had reached the bishop’s palace, swaying on the shoulders of the bastaixos, who had been forced almost to run up the street to keep pace with the enraged people of Barcelona.

Somebody threw a stone at the leaded windows.

This one missed, but not the next one, or many of the others that followed.

Nicolau Eimerich and Berenguer d’Eril rushed away from the windows. Arnau was still waiting for an answer from Francesca. Neither of them moved.

Several people started banging on the palace doors. A youth with a crossbow slung over his back climbed up the wall, cheered on by the crowd below. Others followed suit.

“That’s enough!” shouted one of the city councillors, trying to push the people away from the door. “Enough!” he said again. “Nobody is to attack without the city’s approval.”

The men stopped hammering on the door.

“Nobody can attack the building without an order from the councillors and the guild aldermen,” the official repeated.

The people nearest the door fell silent, and word ran through the square. The Virgin steadied, and silence fell throughout all the host. Everyone in the square was staring up at the six men who had scaled the palace walls; the first of them was already level with the smashed window of the tribunal chamber.

“Come down from there!” came the cry.

The five city councillors and the bastaix alderman, who was wearing the key to the Sacred Urn round his neck, all shouted at the locked palace door.

“Open in the name of the Barcelona host!”

“OPEN UP!” THE Inquisition’s envoy banged on the doors of the Jewry, which had been shut as the host approached. “Open up for the Inquisition!”

He had tried to reach the bishop’s palace, but all the streets leading to it were thronged with people. There was only one way to get there: by crossing the Jewish quarter, which ran alongside the palace. If he could do that, he might be able to send his master the message: the magistrate was not going to intervene.

NICOLAU AND BERENGUER were still in the tribunal chamber when they heard the news: the king’s soldiers would not come to their defense, and the Barcelona host was threatening to assault the palace if they did not let them in.

“What do they want?”

The guard looked toward Arnau.

“They want the consul of the sea set free.”

Nicolau went up to Arnau until their faces were almost touching.

“How dare they!” he spat. Then he turned on his heel and sat down again behind the tribunal bench. Bishop Berenguer went with him. “Let them in,” ordered Nicolau.

To set the consul of the sea free; Arnau straightened up as much as his enfeebled condition would allow. Ever since her son had asked her his question, Francesca had been staring blindly in front of her. “‘Consul of the sea.’ I’m that person,” Arnau’s steady gaze told Nicolau.

The five city councillors and the bastaix alderman burst into the tribunal. Behind them, trying to go unnoticed, came Guillem, who had asked the bastaixos for permission to enter with them. He remained at the door while the other six, weapons drawn, faced Nicolau. One of the councillors stepped forward.

“What—” Nicolau started to say.

“The Barcelona host,” cut in the councillor, raising his voice above the inquisitor’s, “orders you to hand over Arnau Estanyol, consul of the sea.”

“You presume to give orders to the Inquisition?” asked Nicolau.

The councillor did not flinch. “For a second time,” he warned, “the host orders you to hand over the consul of the sea of Barcelona.”

Nicolau blustered, and turned to the bishop for support.

“They’ll attack the palace,” Berenguer said.

“They would not dare,” Nicolau whispered. “He’s a heretic!” he shouted.

“Should you not try him before you decide that?” one of the councillors said.

Nicolau’s eyes narrowed. “He is a heretic,” he insisted.

“For the third and last time, hand over the consul of the sea to us.”

“What do you mean, ‘for the last time’?” asked Berenguer d’Eril.

“Look outside if you really wish to know.”

“Arrest them!” shouted the grand inquisitor, waving his arms at the soldiers guarding the door.

Guillem took a few steps away from them. None of the councillors moved. Some of the soldiers put their hands to their swords, but the captain in charge signaled them to do nothing.

“Arrest them!” shrieked Nicolau.

“They’ve come to negotiate,” argued the captain.

“How dare you—” Nicolau shouted, rising to his feet.

The captain interrupted him: “Tell me how you expect me to defend this palace, and then I will arrest them; the king is not going to come to our aid.” The captain gestured toward the square outside, from where the sounds of the crowd were growing louder every minute. He turned to the bishop for help.

“You can take your consul of the sea,” said the bishop. “He’s free to go.”

Nicolau’s face flushed. “What are you saying ... ?” he cried, grasping the bishop by the arm.

Berenguer d’Eril shook himself free.

“You don’t have the authority to hand over Arnau Estanyol,” the councillor told the bishop. “Nicolau Eimerich,” he went on, “the Barcelona host has given you three chances: now hand over the consul of the sea to us or face the consequences.”

As he was saying this, a stone flew into the chamber and smashed against the front of the long table where the members of the tribunal were placed; even the Dominican friars jumped in their seats. The shouts from Plaza Nova were even louder and more insistent. Another stone came flying in; the clerk gathered up his papers and sought refuge at the far end of the chamber. The black friars who were closest to the window tried to do the same, but the inquisitor gestured for them to remain where they were.

“Are you mad?” whispered the bishop.

Nicolau gazed at everyone in the tribunal one by one, until finally he looked at Arnau. He was smiling.

“Heretic!” he bellowed.

“That is enough,” said the councillor, turning on his heel.

“Take him with you!” pleaded the bishop.

“We only came here to negotiate,” said the councillor, halting as he raised his voice above the noise from outside. “If the Inquisition does not accept the city’s demands and free the prisoner, the host will do so. That is the law.”

Nicolau stood facing them all. He was shaking with rage; his bloodshot eyes bulged. Two more stones crashed into the chamber.