Cathedral of the Sea

“They will attack the palace,” said the bishop, not caring whether he was heard or not. “What do you care? You have his declaration and his possessions. Declare him a heretic anyway; he will be an outlaw forever.”

By now, the councillors and the bastaix alderman had reached the doors of the chamber. The soldiers, all of whom looked terrified, stepped to one side. Guillem was more interested in the conversation between the bishop and the grand inquisitor. All this time, Arnau still stood in the center of the room with Francesca, defying Nicolau, who could not look at him.

“Take him with you!” The inquisitor finally yielded.

As SOON AS Arnau appeared with the councillors in the palace doorway, the roars of jubilation spread from the square to the crowded streets nearby. Francesca limped behind them; nobody had noticed when Arnau took her by the arm and led her out of the chamber. As they left the building, though, he had to let go of her, and she stayed in the background. Inside the tribunal chamber, Nicolau stood behind the bench watching them leave, oblivious to the hail of stones coming in through the window. One of them hit him full on his left arm, but the inquisitor did not even move. All the other members of the tribunal had sought refuge on the far side of the room, as far away as possible from the host’s anger.

Arnau had come to a halt behind the soldiers, although the councillors were urging him to go on out into the square.

“Guillem ...”

The Moor came over to him, put his arms round his shoulders, and kissed him on the mouth.

“Go with them, Arnau,” he told him. “Mar and your brother are waiting outside. I still have things to do here. I’ll come and see you later.”

In spite of the councillors’ efforts to protect him, the crowd rushed toward Arnau as soon as he was out in the square. They embraced him, patted him on the back, congratulated him. Row upon row of beaming faces confronted him. None of them wanted to move away to allow the councillors through; all the faces seemed to be calling to him.

The commotion was so great that the group of five councillors and the bastaix alderman were jostled from one side to another. The uproar and the endless sea of faces shook Arnau to the core. His legs began to weaken. He raised his eyes above the crowd, but all he could see was a forest of crossbows, swords, and fists waving to the shouts of the host, over and over again ... He leaned back on the councillors for support, but just as he was about to collapse, he saw a tiny stone figure appear among the weapons, bobbing along with them.

Guillem was back, and his Virgin was smiling at him. Arnau closed his eyes and allowed himself to be carried shoulder-high by the councillors.

HOWEVER HARD THEY tried to push their way through the crowd, neither Mar and Aledis nor Joan could get anywhere near Arnau. They caught sight of him being carried along as the Virgin of the Sea and the banners began to make their way back to Plaza del Blat. Two others who saw him from amid the crowd were Jaume de Bellera and Genis Puig. Until that moment, they had added their swords to the thousands of other weapons raised at the bishop’s palace. They had even been forced to join in the shouting against the inquisitor, even though deep inside they both urged Nicolau to resist and for the king to change his attitude and come to the defense of the Holy Office. How was it possible that the king they had so often risked their lives for ...

When he saw Arnau, Genis Puig began to whirl his sword in the air and to howl like a man possessed. The lord of Navarcles recognized that cry—he had heard it many times when the knight galloped to the attack, flailing his weapon round his head. Genis’s blade clattered against the crossbows and swords of all those around him. As people started to move away from him, he made straight for the small group carrying the consul of the sea, which by now was about to leave Plaza Nova and head down Calle del Bisbe. How did he imagine he could take on the entire Barcelona host? They would kill him, and then ...

Jaume de Bellera threw himself on his friend and forced him to lower his sword. The men next to them looked on in a puzzled fashion, but the crush of the crowd swept them on toward Calle del Bisbe. As soon as Genis stopped shouting and waving his sword in the air, the gap around them closed up. The lord of Bellera took him to one side, away from anyone who might have seen him launch his charge.

“Have you gone mad?” he asked.

“They’ve set him free ... Free!” answered Genis, staring all the while at the banners that by now were advancing down Calle del Bisbe. Jaume de Bellera forced him to look at him.

“What are you trying to do?”

Genis Puig stared after the banners again and tried to break out of his companion’s grasp.

“To have revenge!” he shouted.

“This isn’t the way,” the lord of Bellera warned him. “This isn’t the way.” He shook Genis Puig until he was forced to respond. “We’ll find a better one.”

Genis stared at him; his lips were trembling.

“Do you swear it?”

“On my honor.”

As THE HOST moved out of Plaza Nova, silence returned to the tribunal chamber. The shouts of victory from the last citizens disappeared down Calle del Bisbe, and the grand inquisitor’s labored breathing became evident. Nobody in the room had moved. The soldiers were still standing to attention, keeping as still as possible. Nicolau’s gaze settled on everyone in turn; he had little need to say anything. “Traitor!” he spat at Berenguer d’Eril. “Cowards!” he shouted at the others. When he looked over toward the soldiers, he discovered Guillem standing among them.

“What is that infidel doing in here?” he cried. “Do they have to mock us in this way?”

The captain of the guard did not know what to say. He had been concentrating so intently on the inquisitor that he had not seen Guillem come in with the councillors. Guillem was on the point of telling him that he was in fact baptized a Christian, but thought better of it: despite the grand inquisitor’s efforts, the Holy Office did not have any jurisdiction over Jews and Moors. Nicolau could not threaten or arrest him.

“My name is Sahat de Pisa,” Guillem said out loud, “and I should like to speak to you.”

“I have nothing to say to an infidel. Throw him out...”

“I think you will be interested in what I have to say.”

“I don’t care what you think.” Nicolau gestured to the captain, who drew his sword.

“Perhaps you will be interested to learn that Arnau Estanyol is abatut,” said Guillem, backing away from the soldier’s sword. “You will not be able to use a single penny of his fortune.”

Nicolau gave a deep sigh and stared up at the chamber roof. Although the captain received no fresh order, he put down his weapon and stopped threatening Guillem.

“What do you mean, infidel?” the inquisitor asked.

“You have Arnau Estanyol’s books; look at them closely.”

“Do you think we haven’t?”

“Did you know that the king’s debts have been pardoned?”

It was Guillem himself who had signed the receipt and given it to Francesc de Perellós. As the Moor had discovered, Arnau had never withdrawn his authority over his affairs.

Nicolau did not move a muscle. Everyone in the tribunal had the same thought: that was why the magistrate had refused to intervene.

Several seconds went by, with Guillem and Nicolau staring at each other. Guillem knew precisely what was going through the grand inquisitor’s mind: “What are you going to tell the pope? How are you going to pay the money you promised him? You’ve already dispatched the letter; he is bound to receive it. What will you say to him? And you need his support against a king whom you have always confronted.”

“And what has all this got to do with you?” Nicolau eventually asked.

“I could explain ... in private,” said Guillem, when Nicolau gestured impatiently at him.

“Barcelona has risen against the Inquisition, and now an infidel dares demand a private audience with me!” Nicolau complained in a loud voice. “Who do you think you are?”

“What will you say to your pope?” Guillem’s eyes questioned him. “Do you really want the whole of Barcelona to hear about your machinations?”

“Search him,” he commanded the captain. “Make sure he is not carrying any weapons, and take him to the antechamber to my office. Wait for me there.”

Flanked by the captain and two soldiers, Guillem stood and waited in the antechamber. He had never dared tell Arnau where his fortune had come from: the slave trade. Now that the king’s debts had been pardoned, if the Inquisition seized Arnau’s possessions, it also took on his debts. Only he, Guillem, knew that the entries in favor of Abraham Levi were false; if he did not show anyone the receipt that the Jewish merchant had signed all those years ago, Arnau’s wealth did not exist.

56

AS SOON AS she emerged from the bishop’s palace, Francecsa moved away from the doors and stood pressed against the wall. From there she could see how the crowd launched itself at Arnau, and watched as the councillors struggled unsuccessfully to keep them away. “Look at your son!” Nicolau’s words drowned out the shouts of the host in her memory. “Didn’t you want me to look at him, Inquisitor? Well, there he is, and he’s won.” When she saw Arnau falter and stumble, she stiffened, but then he disappeared in a waving sea of heads, weapons, and banners, with the small statue of the Virgin bobbing up and down in the midst of them.

Little by little, still shouting and waving weapons in the air, the host made its way down Calle del Bisbe. Francesca did not move. Her legs were giving way beneath her, and she needed to hold herself up against the wall. It was as the square gradually emptied that she saw her: Aledis had refused to follow Mar and Joan, suspecting that the old woman had been left behind. There she was! Aledis was overcome with emotion when she saw her clinging to the only support she could find: she looked so old, frail, and helpless ...

Aledis ran toward her at the very moment the Inquisition guards finally dared poke their noses outside the bishop’s palace, as the shouts of the crowd died away in the distance. Francesca was standing only a few steps away.

“Witch!” the first soldier spat at her.

Aledis came to an abrupt halt a few steps from them.

“Let her be,” shouted Aledis. Several more soldiers had come running out of the palace. “Leave her alone or I’ll call the host,” she threatened them, pointing toward the last backs disappearing down Calle del Bisbe.

Some of the soldiers followed her gaze, but another one drew his sword.

“The inquisitor will be pleased with the death of a witch,” he said.

Francesca did not even look at them. She was staring intently at the woman running toward her. How many years had they spent together? How much suffering had they seen?

“Leave her, you dogs!” shouted Aledis, stepping back and pointing toward the host once more. She wanted to run and fetch them, but the soldier had already lifted his sword high over Francesca’s head. The blade seemed bigger than she did. “Leave her!” Aledis shrieked.

Francesca saw Aledis cover her face in her hands and sink to her knees. She had taken her in all those years ago in Figueres, and ever since ... Was she going to die without one last embrace?

The soldier had drawn back his arm to strike when Francesca’s cold eyes stopped him in his tracks.

“Swords can’t kill witches,” she warned him in an even voice. The blade wavered in his hand. What was she saying? “Only fire can purify a witch at death.” Could it be true? The soldier turned to his companions for support, but they were already backing away. “If you kill me with your sword, I’ll pursue you for the rest of your life—all of you!” None of them could have imagined that the threat they had just heard could come from such a shriveled old body. Aledis looked up. “I’ll pursue you,” hissed Francesca. “I’ll pursue your wives, your children, and your children’s children, and their wives too! A curse on all of you!” For the first time since she had left the palace, Francesca felt strong enough to move away from the wall. By now, the other soldiers had retreated back into the palace, leaving the one with his raised sword all on his own. “I curse you,” Francesca said, pointing her finger at him. “If you kill me, your corpse will never find rest. I’ll turn into a thousand worms and devour you. I’ll make your eyes mine for all eternity.”

As Francesca continued with her curses, Aledis got up from her knees and went over to her. She put an arm round her shoulder and started to lead her away.

“Your children will be lepers ...” The two women passed beneath the sword blade. “Your wife will become the Devil’s whore ...”

They did not look round. For some time, the soldier stood with his arm still raised. He lowered it slowly, and watched the two women crossing the square.

“Let’s get out of here, my child,” Francesca said as soon as they were in Calle del Bisbe, which by now was completely empty.

Aledis was trembling. “I have to pass by the inn ...”

“No. No. Let’s just go. Now. This very minute.”

“What about Teresa and Eulàlia ... ?”

“We’ll send word to them,” said Francesca, clinging to the girl from Figueres.

They came to Plaza San Jaume, then skirted the Jewry heading for the Boqueria gate, the nearest way out of Barcelona. They walked silently, arm in arm.

“What about Arnau?” asked Aledis.

Francesca did not reply.

THE FIRST PART of his plan had worked. By now, Arnau should be with the bastaixos in the small boat Guillem had hired. The agreement with the infante had been very precise: “The only commitment His Highness makes,” Francesc de Perellós had told him, “is not to oppose the Barcelona host. Under no circumstance will he challenge the Inquisition, try to oblige it to do anything, or question its resolutions. If your plan is successful and Estanyol is set free, the infante will not defend him if the Inquisition arrests him again or condemns him. Is all that clear?” Guillem agreed, and handed him the bill of payment for the loans made to the king. Now Guillem had to tackle the second part of his scheme: convincing Nicolau that Arnau was ruined and that there was little to be gained from pursuing or sentencing him. They could all have left for Pisa and left Arnau’s possessions to the Inquisition; but the fact was the Inquisition already had control over his wealth, and if sentence was pronounced on Arnau, even in absentia, there would be a warrant for his arrest. This was why Guillem wanted to try to deceive Eimerich; there was nothing to lose, and a lot to gain: Arnau’s peace of mind and ensuring that the Inquisition did not pursue him for the rest of his life.

Nicolau kept Guillem waiting several hours. When he finally appeared, he was accompanied by a small Jewish man dressed in a black coat and wearing the obligatory yellow badge. The Jew scurried after the inquisitor, carrying several account books under his arm. He avoided looking at Guillem when Nicolau gestured to both of them to step inside his chamber.

He did not ask them to sit down, but himself took a seat behind his big table.

“If what you say is true,” he said, addressing Guillem, “Estanyol is abatut, ruined.”

“You know it’s true,” Guillem replied. “The king does not owe Arnau Estanyol a penny.”

“In that case, I could call the city’s finance inspector,” said the inquisitor. “How ironic if the same city that freed him from the Holy Office were to execute him for being abatut.”

“That will never happen,” Guillem was tempted to reply. “I can easily secure Arnau’s freedom, simply by showing Abraham Levi’s receipt...” But no: Nicolau had not agreed to receive him just to denounce Arnau to the finance inspector. What he wanted was his money, the money he had promised the pope, the money that this Jew (who must be a friend of Jucef’s) had told him was available.

Guillem said nothing.

“I could do so,” insisted Nicolau.

Guillem spread his palms. The inquisitor looked at him more closely.

“Who are you?” he asked at length.

“My name is—”

“I know, I know,” Eimerich said, with a chopping, impatient gesture. “Your name is Sahat from Pisa. What I should like to know is what someone from Pisa is doing in Barcelona defending a heretic.”

“Arnau Estanyol has a lot of friends, even in Pisa.” “Infidels and heretics!” cried Nicolau.

Guillem spread his palms once more. How long would it be before the inquisitor succumbed to the idea of money? Nicolau seemed to have understood. He said nothing for a few moments.

“What do those friends of Arnau Estanyol have to offer the Inquisition?” he finally asked.

“In those books,” said Guillem, nodding toward the tiny Jew, who had not taken his eyes off Nicolau’s table, “there are entries in favor of one of Arnau Estanyol’s creditors. They amount to a fortune.”

For the first time, the inquisitor addressed the Jew. “Is this true?”

“Yes,” replied the Jew. “From the outset, there are entries in the name of Abraham Levi ...”

“Another heretic!” Nicolau exploded.

The three men fell silent.

“Go on,” ordered the inquisitor.

“Those entries have added up over the years. By now, they must amount to more than fifteen thousand pounds.”

A glint appeared in the inquisitor’s narrowed eyes. Neither Guillem nor the little Jew failed to notice it.

“Well?” asked the inquisitor.

“Arnau Estanyol’s friends could see to it that Levi renounced his right to the money.”

Nicolau sat back in his chair.

“Your friend,” he said, “is a free man. Nobody gives money away. Why would anyone, however great a friend, give away fifteen thousand pounds?”

“Arnau Estanyol has only been set free by the host.”

Guillem stressed the word “only”; Arnau could still be seen to be subject to the Holy Inquisition. The crucial moment had arrived. He had been weighing it up during the long hours he had been kept waiting in the antechamber, while he was staring at the weapons of the Inquisition’s guards. He had to be careful not to underestimate Nicolau’s intelligence. The Inquisition had no authority over a Moor ... unless Nicolau could prove there had been a direct attack on the institution. Guillem could never offer an inquisitor a deal directly. It had to be Eimerich who made the suggestion first. An infidel could not be seen to be trying to buy off the Holy Office.

Nicolau looked at him challengingly. “You’re not going to catch me out,” thought Guillem.

“Perhaps you are right,” said Guillem. “It’s true, there is no logical reason why, with Arnau a free man, anyone should want to offer such a large amount of money.” The inquisitor’s eyes narrowed to slits. “I don’t really understand why they asked me to come here. I was told you would understand, but I share your invaluable opinion. I’m sorry to have wasted your time.”

Guillem waited for Nicolau to make up his mind. When the inquisitor sat up in his seat and opened his eyes wide, he knew he had won.

“Leave us,” Nicolau instructed the Jew. As soon as the little man had shut the door, Nicolau went on, although he still did not offer Guillem a seat. “It may be true that your friend is free, but the case against him has not been completed. Even if he is a free man, I can still sentence him as a relapsed heretic. The Inquisition,” he continued, as though talking to himself, “cannot dictate death sentences; that must come from the secular power, the king. Your friends,” he said, “ought to know that the king’s will may change. Perhaps someday ...”

“I am sure that both you and His Majesty will do what you have to,” replied Guillem.

“The king has a very clear idea of what is for the best: that is, fighting against the infidel and taking Christianity to all the far corners of the kingdom. But as for the Church: sometimes it is difficult to know what is best for a people with no frontiers. Your friend Arnau Estanyol has confessed his guilt, and that confession must be punished.” Nicolau paused, and stared again at Guillem.

“You have to be the one,” the other man insisted with his look.

“And yet,” said the inquisitor when he saw that Guillem was not going to say anything, “the Church and the Inquisition have to show themselves merciful, if by that attitude they can secure benefits for the common good. Would your friends-rhe people who have sent you-accept a lesser sentence?”

“I’m not going to bargain with you, Eimerich,” thought Guillem. “Only Allah, praised be his name, knows what you might obtain if you arrested me; only Allah knows if there are eyes spying on us from behind these walls, or ears listening to us. It has to be you who proposes the solution.”

“Nobody would call into question whatever the Inquisition decides,” he answered.

Nicolau stirred in his chair.

“You asked for a private audience on the pretext of having something to offer me. You’ve said that some friends of Arnau Estanyol could arrange it so that his main creditor renounces a debt of fifteen thousand pounds. What is it you want, infidel?”

“I know what I don’t want,” was all Guillem replied.

“All right,” said Nicolau, rising from his seat. “A minimum punishment: he is to wear the cloak of repentance in the cathedral every Sunday for a year, and in return your friends will ensure that the credit is canceled.”

“In Santa Maria,” Guillem said, somewhat to his own surprise. The words seemed to have come spontaneously from deep inside him. Where else but Santa Maria could Arnau fulfill his punishment?

57

MAR TRIED TO keep up with the men carrying Arnau on their shoulders, but she could not force her way through the crowd. She remembered Aledis’s last words: “Take care of him,” she had shouted above the uproar of the host. She was smiling.

Mar had rushed off, pushing against the human tide that threatened to sweep her away.

“Take good care of him,” Aledis repeated, with Mar still looking at her and trying to get out of the way of the rush of people. “I wanted to, but that was many years ago ...”

All of a sudden she was gone.

Mar almost fell to the ground and was trampled. “The host is no place for women,” grumbled a man who pushed her out of his way. Mar managed to turn round. She looked for the banners that were already entering Plaza San Jaume at the far end of Calle del Bisbe. For the first time that morning, Mar dried her tears, and from her throat came a roar so loud it silenced all those around her. She did not even think about Joan. She shouted, pushed, kicked at the men in front of her, forcing them to make room for her.

The host gathered in Plaza del Blat. Mar found herself quite close to the Virgin, which was still dancing on bastaixos shoulders over the stone in the center of the square. But there was no sign of Arnau ... Mar thought she could see some men arguing with the city councillors. Perhaps ... yes, he was in the midst of them. She was only a few steps away, but the square was very crowded. She clawed at the arm of a man who would not let her through. The man drew a dagger and for a brief moment... But in the end, he burst out laughing and gave way. Arnau should have been directly behind him, but when Mar managed to get past, the only people she found were the councillors and the bastaix alderman.

“Where is Arnau?” she asked. She was panting and perspiring freely.

The imposing bastaix, wearing the key to the Sacred Urn round his neck, looked down at her. It was a secret. The Inquisition ...

“I’m Mar Estanyol,” she said, stumbling over the words. “I’m the orphaned daughter of Ramon the bastaix. You must have known him.”

No, he had not known him, but he had heard of him and his daughter, and of the fact that Arnau had adopted her.

“Run down to the beach,” was all he said.

Mar crossed the square and flew down Calle de la Mar, which had emptied of people. She caught up with them outside the Consulate: six bastaixos were carrying Arnau shoulder-high. He was still stunned from all that had happened.

Mar wanted to throw herself on them, but one of the bastaixos stood in her way; the man from Pisa had given them clear instructions: nobody should know where they were taking Arnau.

“Let go of me!” shouted Mar, her feet flailing in the air.

The bastaix had lifted her by the waist, trying not to hurt her. She weighed less than half of any of the stones or bundles he had to carry every day.

“ARNAU! ARNAU!”

How often had he dreamed he was hearing that voice? When he opened his eyes, he saw he was being carried by a group of men whose faces he could not even make out. They were taking him somewhere in a hurry, without speaking. What was going on? Where was he? Arnau! Yes, it was the same plea he had once seen in the eyes of a young girl he had betrayed, in the farmhouse of Felip de Ponts.

“Arnau!” The beach. His memories mingled with the sound of the waves and the salty breeze. What was he doing on the beach?

“Arnau!”

The voice came from afar.

The bastaixos entered the water, heading for the small boat that would take Arnau to the larger vessel Guillem had hired, which was waiting farther offshore. The salt water splashed Arnau.

“Arnau!”

“Wait,” he muttered, trying to raise himself. “That voice ... who ... ?”

“A woman,” said one of the bastaixos. “She won’t cause any problem. We ought to ...”

Arnau was standing by the side of the boat, still supported under the arms by the bastaixos. He looked back at the beach. “Mar is waiting for you.” Guillem’s words silenced everything going on around him. Guillem, Nicolau, the Inquisition, the dungeons—it all came flooding back to him.

“My God!” he cried. “Bring her here, I beg you.”

One of the bastaixos rushed over to where she was still being held.

Arnau saw her running toward him.

The bastaixos, who were also looking at her, turned their attention to Arnau when he struggled free of their grasp; it seemed as though the gentlest of the waves might knock him over at any time.

Mar came to a halt beside Arnau, who was standing there with his arms by his sides. She saw a tear fall down his cheek. She stepped forward and kissed it away.

Neither of them said a word. Mar herself helped the bastaixos lift him into the boat.

THERE WAS NO point in his going openly against the king.

Ever since Guillem had left, Nicolau paced up and down his chamber. If Arnau had no money, there was no point sentencing him either. The pope would never release him from the promise he had made. The man from Pisa had him trapped. If he wanted to keep his word with the pope ...

His attention was distracted by hammering at the door, but after glancing at it, he carried on walking up and down.

Yes. A lesser punishment would safeguard his reputation as an inquisitor. It would also avoid any confrontation with the king, as well as providing him with enough money to ...

More hammering on the door. Nicolau looked over at it again.

He would have loved to have sent that Estanyol to the stake. What about his mother? What had become of her? She must have taken advantage of the confusion ...

The hammering echoed through the room. Nicolau flung the door open.

“Whar ... ?”

Jaume de Bellera was standing there, his fist raised to pound once more.

“What do you want?” asked the grand inquisitor, glancing across at the captain who should have been guarding the antechamber. He was pinioned against the wall by Genis Puig’s sword. “How dare you threaten a soldier of the Holy Inquisition!” Nicolau roared.

Genis lowered his sword and stared at his companion.

“We’ve been waiting a long time,” said the lord of Navarcles.

“I have no wish to see anyone,” Nicolau said to the captain, who had struggled free from Genis. “I’ve already told you that.”

The inquisitor made to close the door, but Jaume de Bellera prevented him from doing so.

“I am a Catalan baron,” he said slowly and carefully, “and I demand respect for my rank.”

Genis bellowed his agreement, and lifted his sword again to prevent the captain from coming to Nicolau’s aid.

Nicolau looked into the lord of Bellera’s face. He could call for help; the rest of the guards could be there in a moment, but those desperate eyes ... Who knew what two men used to imposing their authority could do? He sighed. This was far from being the happiest day of his life.

“Very well, Baron,” he said, “what do you want?”

“You promised you would sentence Arnau Estanyol, but you have let him escape.”

“I do not recall having promised anything, and as for letting him go ... it was your king, the man whose noble line you support, who refused to come to the aid of the Church. Go and demand an explanation from him.”

Jaume de Bellera muttered some unintelligible words and waved his hands in the air.

“You could still condemn him,” he said.

“He has escaped,” Nicolau admitted.

“We’ll bring him to you!” shouted Genis Puig, who was still threatening the captain, but was listening closely to what they were saying.

Nicolau turned to look at him. Why did he have to explain anything to them?

“We provided you with more than enough proof of his sin,” said Jaume de Bellera. “The Inquisition cannot—”

“What proof?” barked Eimerich. These two dolts were offering him a way to save his honor. If he could question their proof... “What proof?” he repeated. “The accusation by someone possessed by the Devil like you, Baron?” Jaume de Bellera tried to say something, but Nicolau silenced him with a scything movement of his hand. “I’ve looked for the documents you said the bishop drew up when you were born.” The two men glared at each other. “But I couldn’t find them.”

Genis Puig let his sword hand drop to his side.

“They must be somewhere in his archives,” Jaume de Bellera spluttered.

“And you, sir?” Nicolau shouted, turning to Genis. “What do you have against Arnau Estanyol?” The inquisitor could tell that Genis was trying to hide the truth: that was what Nicolau was good at. “Did you know that to lie to the Inquisition is a crime?” Genis looked to Jaume de Bellera for support, but the nobleman was gazing up at some point on the chamber ceiling. Genis was on his own. “What do you have to say?” Genis shifted uncomfortably, not knowing where to look. “What did the moneylender do to you?” Nicolau insisted. “Did he ruin you, perhaps?”

Genis reacted. It was only for a split second, a second in which he glanced at the inquisitor out of the corner of his eye. That must be it! What could a moneylender do to a nobleman if not ruin him financially?

“Not me,” Genis replied naively.

“Not you? Who then? Your father?”

Genis looked down at the floor.

“So you tried to use the Holy Office by lying! You made a false accusation for your own personal revenge!”

Hearing the inquisitor scream at his companion brought Jaume de Bellera back to reality.

“But he burned his father,” Genis insisted almost inaudibly.

Nicolau waved his hand angrily. What should he do now? If he arrested and tried them, that would only mean keeping alive something that was much better dead and buried as soon as possible.

“You are to appear before the clerk to the Inquisition and withdraw your charges. If you do not do so ... Do you understand?” he shouted when neither of them appeared to react. They nodded. “The Inquisition cannot judge a man on the basis of false accusations. Get out of here,” he concluded, signaling to the guard captain.

“You swore on your honor you would have revenge,” Genis Puig said to Jaume de Bellera as they turned to leave.

Nicolau heard the recrimination. He also heard the response: “No lord of Bellera has ever broken his oath,” Jaume de Bellera retorted.

The grand inquisitor’s eyes narrowed. That was enough. He had allowed a prisoner to go free. He had just ordered two witnesses to withdraw their charges. He was making a bargain with ... a man from Pisa? He did not even know his name! What if Jaume de Bellera carried out his revenge before he had a chance to get his hands on the fortune Arnau had left? Would the man from Pisa keep his side of the bargain? All this had to be kept quiet once and for all.

“Well, on this occasion,” he bellowed at the men’s retreating backs, “the lord of Bellera is not going to keep his word.”

The two men turned back to him.

“What are you saying?” said Jaume de Bellera.

“That the Holy Office cannot allow two”—he dismissed them with a gesture—“two laymen to question a sentence that it has passed. That is divine justice. There is to be no other revenge! Do you understand that, Bellera?” The nobleman hesitated. “If you carry out your threat, I will try you for being possessed by the Devil. Do you understand now?”

“But I’ve sworn an oath ...”

“In the name of the Holy Inquisition, I relieve you of your promise.” Jaume de Bellera nodded. “And you,” added Nicolau, turning to Genis Puig, “you are to take great care not to wreak vengeance in a matter already resolved by the Inquisition. Is that clear?”

Genis Puig nodded.

THE CATBOAT, A small craft with one sail about thirty feet long, had pulled into a tiny cove on the Garraf coast, hidden from passing ships and approachable only by sea.

A rough wooden hut, built by fishermen from the flotsam the Mediterranean had deposited on the shore of the cove, was the only thing that broke the monotony of gray stones and pebbles that vied with the sun to reflect the light and warmth it brought them.

Together with a weighty bag of coins, the helmsman had received strict instructions from Guillem: “You are to leave him there with food and water and a man you can trust. Then you can go about your business, but stick to nearby ports and return to Barcelona at least every two days to receive further instructions from me. There will be more money for you when all this is over,” he had promised in order to secure the man’s loyalty. In fact, there was no real need for this: Arnau was known and loved by all seagoing folk, who saw him as an honest consul. The man accepted the money anyway. However, he had not taken Mar into account. She refused to share the responsibility of looking after Arnau with anyone else.

“I’ll take care of him,” she said once they had disembarked in the cove and she had installed Arnau in the shade of the hut.

“But the man from Pisa ... ,” the helmsman tried to argue.

“Tell him that Mar is with Arnau, and if that doesn’t satisfy him, come back with your man.”

She spoke with an authority he had rarely heard in a woman. He stared her up and down and again tried to object.

“Be on your way,” was all she said.

When his boat had disappeared behind the rocks at the cove entrance, Mar took a deep breath and peered up at the sky. How often had she denied herself a fantasy like this? How often, with the memory of Arnau fresh in her mind, had she tried to convince herself her destiny lay elsewhere? And now ... Mar glanced toward the hut. Arnau was still asleep. During the crossing, Mar had been able to check that he did not have a fever and was not wounded. She had sat down next to him, crossed her legs, and lifted his head onto her lap.

Arnau had opened his eyes on several occasions, stared up at her, then closed them again, a smile on his lips. She took one of his hands in hers, and whenever Arnau gazed at her, she squeezed it until he fell back into a contented sleep. This had happened time and again, as though he were trying to prove to himself that she was real. And now ... Mar went back to the hut and sat at Arnau’s feet.

HE SPENT TWO days going round Barcelona, remembering the places that had been part of his life for so long. Little seemed to have changed during the five years Guillem had been in Pisa. Despite the crisis, the city teemed with activity. Barcelona was still open to the sea, defended only by the tasques where Arnau had scuttled the whaling boat when Pedro the Cruel had threatened the coast with his fleet. The western wall Pedro the Third had ordered built was still under construction, as were the royal shipyards. Until they were finished, all the ships came aground for repairs or were built in the old yards at the foot of the beach opposite the Regomir tower. Guillem breathed in the sharp smell of tar that the caulkers used, mixed with oakum, to make the ships’ hulls watertight. He watched the carpenters at work, the oarmakers, blacksmiths, and ropemakers. In times gone by, he had accompanied Arnau to make sure that they did not mix new hemp with old when they twisted cables or rigging ropes. They would walk up and down, supervised by solemn-looking carpenters. Then after checking the ropes, Arnau would invariably head for the caulkers. He would send away everyone else, so that just he and Guillem could talk in private with these men.

“Their work is essential: they are forbidden by law to be paid by how much they do,” Arnau had explained the first time. That was why the consul wanted to talk to them, to ensure that none of the caulkers had been forced by necessity to do his work hurriedly, and so put the fleet at risk.

Now Guillem watched a caulker on his knees carefully checking the seal he had just finished on a ship’s hull. Seeing him made Guillem close his eyes. He tightened his mouth and shook his head. He and Arnau had fought alongside each other so often, and now his friend was hiding in a distant cove, waiting for the inquisitor to sentence him to a lesser punishment. Christians! At least he had Mar with him ... his little child. Guillem had not been surprised when the captain of the catboat had appeared at the corn exchange and explained what had happened with Mar and Arnau. His little child!

“Good luck to you, my pretty one,” he had murmured.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing, nothing. You did the right thing. Put to sea again, and come back in a couple of days.”

The first day, he had had no news from Eimerich. On the second, he went back into Barcelona. He could not just sit there waiting; he left his servants in the exchange, with orders to find him if anyone appeared asking for him.

The merchants’ districts were exactly the same. He could walk through the city with his eyes closed, letting himself be guided by the distinctive smells from each of them. The cathedral, like Santa Maria or the Pi church, was still under construction, although work on the shrine to the Virgin of the Sea was much further advanced. Santa Clara and Santa Anna were also covered in scaffolding. Guillem paused in front of each church and watched the carpenters and masons hard at work. What about the seawall? And the secure harbor? How strange Christians were.

On the third day, one of his servants came panting up to him. “Someone at the corn exchange is asking for you.”

“Have you given way then, Nicolau?” Guillem wondered as he hurried back.

NICOLAU EIMERICH SIGNED the Inquisition’s sentence with Guillem standing on the far side of the table. He added his seal, and handed it over in silence.

Guillem picked it off the table and began to read it.

“Read the end. That’s all you need bother with,” the grand inquisitor urged him.

He had forced the clerk to work all night, and had no intention of spending all day waiting for this infidel to read the document through.

Guillem peered at him over the top of the parchment and carried on reading the inquisitor’s arguments. So Jaume de Bellera and Genis Puig had withdrawn their charges: how had Nicolau managed to achieve that? Margarida Puig’s testimony had been thrown into doubt because the tribunal had discovered that her family had been ruined in dealings with Arnau. As for Eleonor ... she had refused to accept the surrender and submission every wife ought to show her lord and master!

In addition, Eleonor claimed that the accused had publicly embraced a Jewish woman with whom he was suspected of having carnal relations. As witnesses, she cited Nicolau himself and Bishop Berenguer d‘Eril. Guillem looked up again at Nicolau; the inquisitor held his gaze. “It is not true,” Nicolau had written, “that the accused embraced a Jewish woman on the occasion Doña Eleonor was referring to.” Neither he nor Berenguer d’Eril, who had also signed the document—at this point, Guillem did turn to the last sheet to confirm the bishop’s signature and seal—could support this charge. The smoke, the flames, the noise, the crowd’s passion—Nicolau had written—could have led a woman who was by nature weak to have thought this was what she had seen. And since the accusation made by Doña Eleonor regarding Arnau’s relationship with this Jewish woman was obviously false, little credibility could be afforded to the rest of her testimony.

Guillem smiled.

This meant that the only actions that could be held against Arnau were those described by the priests of Santa Maria de la Mar. The blasphemy had been admitted by the prisoner, but he had repented of it in front of the whole tribunal, and this was the ultimate goal of every trial held by the Inquisition. For this reason, Arnau Estanyol was sentenced to pay a penalty consisting of the seizure of all his goods, and to do penance every Sunday for a year outside Santa Maria de la Mar, wearing the cloak of repentance that all those found guilty by the Inquisition were obliged to wear.

Guillem finished reading all the grandiloquent legal formulas, then checked that the document was properly signed and sealed by the grand inquisitor and the bishop. He had done it!

He rolled up the parchment, then searched in his clothes for the bill of payment signed by Abraham Levi. He handed it to Nicolau and watched in silence as he read it. The document signified Arnau’s ruin, but guaranteed his freedom and his life. In any case, Guillem would never have been able to explain to Arnau where the money had come from, or why he had hidden the piece of paper for so many years.

58

ARNAU SLEPT THE rest of that day. At nightfall, Mar lit a fire with twigs and the wood the fishermen had collected in the hut. The sea was calm. Mar looked up at the stars coming out in the night sky. Then she peered out at the cliffs surrounding the cove: the moonlight was playing here and there on the edges of the rocks, creating fantastic shapes.

She breathed in the silence and savored the calm. The world did not exist. Barcelona did not exist. Nor did the Inquisition, or Eleonor or Joan. There was only her ... and Arnau.

Around midnight she heard sounds from inside the hut. She got up to see what it was, and saw Arnau emerging into the moonlight. They stood in silence a few steps from each other.

Mar was standing between Arnau and the bonfire. The glow from the fire silhouetted her figure, but hid her features. “Am I in heaven already?” thought Arnau. As his eyes grew used to the darkness, he was able distinguish the details he had so often pursued in dreams: first of all, her bright eyes—how many nights had he shed tears over them?—then her nose, her cheekbones, her chin ... and her mouth, and those lips ... The figure opened its arms to him and the light from the flames streamed round her, caressing a body clothed in ethereal robes that the light and dark complemented. She was calling him.

Arnau answered her call. What was happening? Where was he? Could it really be Mar? When he took her hands, saw her smiling at him and then kissing him on the lips, he had his reply.

Mar clung to him as tightly as she could, and the world returned to normal. “Hold me,” he heard her ask. Arnau put his arm round her shoulder and held her to him. He heard her start to cry. He could feel her sobbing against him, and gently stroked her hair. How many years had gone by before they could enjoy a moment like this? How many mistakes had he made?

Arnau raised Mar’s head from his shoulder and forced her to look up into his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he began to say. “I’m sorry I forced you to—”

“Don’t say anything,” she interrupted him. “The past doesn’t exist. There is nothing to be sorry for. Today is when we start to live. Look,” she said, pulling away from him and taking his hand, “look at the sea. The sea has no past. It is just there. It will never ask us to explain. The stars, the moon are there to light our way, to shine for us. What do they care what might have happened in the past? They are accompanying us, and are happy with that; can you see them shine? The stars are twinkling in the sky; would they do that if the past mattered? Wouldn’t there be a huge storm if God wanted to punish us? We are alone, you and I, with no past, no memories, no guilt, nothing that can stand in the way of ... our love.”

Arnau stood looking up at the sky, then lowered his gaze to the sea and the gentle waves lapping at the shore without even breaking. He looked at the wall of rock protecting them, and swayed in the silent darkness.

He turned back to Mar, still holding her hand. There was something he had to tell her, something painful that he had sworn before the Virgin after the death of his first wife, something he could not renounce. Staring her in the eyes, he told her everything in a whisper.

When he had finished, Mar sighed.

“All I know is that I have no intention of ever leaving you again, Arnau. I want to be with you, to be close to you ... in whatever way you choose.”

ON THE MORNING of the fifth day, a small boat arrived. The only person to disembark was Guillem. The three of them met on the seashore. Mar stood aside to let the two men fling their arms round each other.

“God!” sobbed Arnau.

“Which God?” asked Guillem, almost too moved to speak. He pushed Arnau away and smiled a broad smile.

“The God of everyone,” replied Arnau, as happy as he was.

“Come here, my child,” said Guillem, releasing one arm.

Mar came up to the two men and put her arms round their waists.

“I’m not your child anymore,” she told him with a mischievous smile.

“You always will be,” said Guillem.

“Yes, that you will always be,” Arnau confirmed.

And so arm in arm they walked over and sat down by the remains of the previous evening’s fire.

“You are a free man, Arnau,” said Guillem when he had settled on the sand. “Here is the Inquisition’s ruling.”

“Tell me what it says,” Arnau asked him, refusing to take the document. “I’ve never read anything that came from you.”

“It says they are seizing your goods ...” Guillem glanced at Arnau, but saw no reaction. “And that you are sentenced to a year’s penitence wearing the cloak of repentance every Sunday for a year outside the doors of Santa Maria de la Mar. Beyond that, the Inquisition says that you are free.”

Arnau saw himself wearing the long penitent’s cloak with two white crosses painted on it, standing outside the doors of Santa Maria.

“I should have known you could do it when I saw you in the tribunal, but I was in no state—”

“Arnau,” said Guillem, interrupting him, “did you hear what I said? The Inquisition has seized all your possessions.”

For a while, Arnau said nothing.

“I was a dead man, Guillem,” he replied at length. “Eimerich wanted my blood. Besides, I would have given everything I have ... everything I used to have,” he corrected himself, taking Mar’s hand, “for these past few days.” Guillem looked at Mar and saw her beaming smile and glistening eyes. His child. He smiled too. “I have been thinking...”

“Traitor!” said Mar, pouting her lips in mock reproach.

Arnau patted her hand. “As far as I can remember, it must cost a lot of money for the king not to oppose the Barcelona host.”

Guillem nodded.

“Thank you,” said Arnau.

The two men stared at each other.

“Well,” said Arnau, deciding to break the spell. “What about you? What has happened to you in all this time?”

THE SUN WAS high in the sky by the time the three of them headed out to the catboat, which the helmsman brought in close to shore at their signal. Arnau and Guillem climbed on board.

“Just one minute,” Mar begged them.

The girl turned toward the cove and looked at the hut for one last time. What would the future hold for her? Arnau and his penitence, Eleonor ...

Mar looked down.

“Don’t worry about her,” Arnau said when she was on board the boat. “She won’t have any money, and won’t bother us. The palace in Calle de Montcada is part of my wealth, so now it belongs to the Inquisition. All that’s left for her is Montbui. She will have to move there.”

“The castle,” murmured Mar. “Will the Inquisition take that too?”

“No. The castle and its lands were given to us by the king on our marriage. The Inquisition has no authority to seize them.”

“I feel sorry for the feudal peasants,” said Mar, remembering the day when Arnau abolished all the ancient privileges.

Neither of them mentioned Mataró and Felip de Ponts’s farmhouse.

“We’ll get by somehow—” Arnau started to say.

“What are you talking about?” Guillem cut in. “You will have all the money you need. If you wish, you could buy the Calle de Montcada palace all over again.”

“But that’s your money,” Arnau protested.

“It’s our money. Look,” said Guillem, addressing them both. “Apart from you two, I have no one. What am I meant to do with the money I have thanks to your generosity? Of course it’s yours.”

“No, no,” Arnau insisted.

“You are my family. My child ... and the man who gave me freedom and riches. Does this mean you do not want me as part of your family?”

Mar stretched out her arm to him. Arnau stuttered: “No ... that wasn’t what I meant at all ... Of course ...”

“Well, if you accept me, you accept my money,” said Guillem. “Or would you rather the Inquisition took it?”

His question forced a smile from Arnau.

“Besides, I have great plans,” said Guillem.

Mar sat looking back at the cove. A tear trickled down her cheek. She did not try to wipe it away, as it ran down and into the corner of her mouth. They were on their way back to Barcelona. To carry out an unjust punishment, to return to the Inquisition, to Joan, the brother who had betrayed Arnau ... and a wife he hated but from whom he could never be free.

59

GUILLEM HAD RENTED a house in La Ribera neighborhood. It was not luxurious, but was spacious enough for the three of them, with a room for Joan as well, Guillem thought when he gave his instructions. When he disembarked from the catboat in the port of Barcelona, Arnau was received with great affection by the workmen on the beach. Some merchants supervising the loading of their goods or coming and going from the warehouses also nodded as he passed by.

“I’m not a rich man anymore,” Arnau said to Guillem as he returned the greetings.

“News spreads quickly,” Guillem replied.

Arnau had said that the first thing he wanted to do when he returned was to visit Santa Maria to thank the Virgin for his freedom. The confused image he had of the tiny statue dancing in the air above the heads of the crowd while he was being carried by the city councillors had become much clearer. But his plan was interrupted when they passed by the corner of Canvis Vells and Canvis Nous: the door and windows of his house—his countinghouse—had been thrown wide open. A group of curious onlookers had gathered outside. They stepped aside when they saw Arnau arrive, but he did not go in. The three of them recognized some of the pieces of furniture and other effects that the soldiers of the Inquisition were carrying out and piling on a cart by the front door: the long table, which hung over the back of the cart and had been tied on with ropes, the red rug, the metal shears to test fake coins, the abacus, the money chests ...

Arnau’s attention was caught by a figure dressed in black who was noting down all the goods seized. The Dominican paused in his work and stared defiantly at him. The onlookers fell silent as Arnau realized where he had seen those eyes before: they belonged to one of the friars who had studied him during the tribunal sessions, behind the bench next to the bishop.

“Vultures,” Arnau muttered.

These were his possessions, his past, his moments of joy and of defeat. He would never have thought that to witness the way they were stripping him ... He had never attached any importance to material things, and yet it was a whole life they were carting away.

Mar could feel Arnau’s palm grow sweaty.

Someone in the small crowd started to jeer the friar. At once, the soldiers left the furniture and drew their weapons. Three other armed men appeared from inside the house.

“They won’t allow the common people to humiliate them again,” warned Guillem, dragging Mar and Arnau away.

The soldiers charged the group of spectators, who scattered in all directions. Arnau let himself be led away by Guillem, although he constantly looked back at the cart.

They forgot about Santa Maria, where the soldiers were still chasing some of the onlookers. Instead, they skirted round the church until they came to Plaza del Born and their new home.

THE NEWS OF Arnau’s return spread quickly through the city. The first people to arrive at his new house were missatges from the Consulate of the Sea. The official did not dare look Arnau in the face. When he addressed him, he used the title “Your Worship,” but he was there to give him the letter in which the Council of a Hundred stripped him of his position. Arnau held out his hand to the official, who finally raised his eyes.

“It’s been an honor to work with you,” the official said.

“The honor was all mine,” replied Arnau. “They don’t want anyone poor,” he told Guillem and Mar when the official and his soldiers had left the house.

“We need to talk about that,” said Guillem.

But Arnau shook his head. “Not yet,” he pleaded.

Many other people came to visit Arnau in his new home. Some of them, like the alderman of the bastaix guild, he received personally; others of more humble station were happy simply to offer their best wishes to the servant who attended them.

On the second day, Joan appeared. Ever since had had heard that Arnau was in Barcelona, Joan had been wondering what Mar could have told him. When the uncertainty became unbearable, he decided to face his fears and go to see his brother.

When Joan entered the dining room, Arnau and Guillem stood up to greet him. Mar remained seated at the table.

“You burned your father’s body!” Nicolau Eimerich’s accusation rang through Arnau’s mind as soon as he saw Joan. Until then, he had been trying to push the thought away.

Still standing in the doorway, Joan stammered out a few words. Then he walked over toward Arnau, head lowered.

Arnau’s eyes narrowed. So he had come to ask forgiveness. How could a brother ... ?

“How could you do it?” he said when Joan was by his side.

Joan’s gaze shifted from the floor to Mar. Had she not punished him enough? Did he have to confess everything to Arnau as well? She seemed surprised at his presence.

“Why did you come here?” asked Arnau coldly.

Joan searched desperately for an excuse.

“We have to pay the expenses at the inn,” he heard himself say.

Arnau’s hand chopped the air, and then he turned on his heel.

Guillem called one of his servants and gave him a bag of money.

“Go with the friar and pay the hostel bill,” he commanded.

Joan turned to the Moor for support, but Guillem did not so much as blink. The friar walked back to the door and vanished through it.

“What happened between you?” asked Mar as soon as Joan had gone.

Arnau said nothing. Ought they to know? How could he explain that he had burned his father’s body, and that his own brother had denounced him to the Inquisition? He was the only one who knew.

“Let’s forget the past,” he said at length, “at least as much as we can.”

Mar sat in silence for a while, and then nodded.

JOAN FOLLOWED GUILLEM’S slave out of the house. The young lad had to stop and wait for the friar several times on the way, because he kept stopping and peering blindly around him. They had taken the way to the corn exchange, which the boy knew well, but when they came to Calle de Montcada, the slave could not get Joan to follow him any farther. The friar would not budge from the gateway to Arnau’s palace.

“You go and pay,” Joan told the boy, to be free of him. “I have another debt to settle,” he muttered to himself.

Pere, the aged servant, led him into Eleonor’s chamber. As Joan walked along, he started muttering something, at first in a low whisper as he crossed the threshold, then louder as he climbed the stone staircase with Pere, who looked round at him in astonishment, and then in a roar as he entered the room where Eleonor was waiting for him:

“I know you have sinned!”

On her feet at the far end of the room, the baroness surveyed him haughtily. “What nonsense are you talking, Friar?” she said.

“I know you have sinned,” repeated Joan.

Eleonor burst out laughing and turned her back on him.

Joan stared at her richly embroidered robe. Mar had suffered. He had suffered. Arnau ... Arnau must have suffered even more than they had.

Eleonor was still laughing, her face turned from him. “Who do you think you are, Friar?”

“I am an inquisitor of the Holy Office,” Joan replied. “And in your case, I do not need any confession.”

When she heard this harsh rejoinder, Eleonor turned to face him. She saw he had an oil lamp in his hand.

“What... ?”

Joan did not give her time to finish. He threw the lamp at her. The oil soaked the heavy material of her robe and caught fire.

Eleonor screamed.

By the time Pere could come to her aid, she was a flaming torch. He called the rest of the servants, and pulled down a tapestry to smother the flames. Joan pushed him aside, but other slaves were already rushing in, wild-eyed.

Someone shouted for water.

Joan looked at Eleonor, who was on her knees enveloped in flames.

“Forgive me, Lord,” he muttered.

He seized another lamp and went up to Eleonor. The hem of his habit also caught fire.

“Repent!” he shouted, before he too was engulfed in flames.

He emptied the second lamp on Eleonor and fell to the floor beside her.

The rug they were on started to burn fiercely. Then the flames began to lick at the furniture in the room.

By the time the slaves appeared with water, all they could do was throw it in from the doorway. Then, overcome by the dense smoke, they covered their faces and ran.

60

15 August 1384

Feast of the Assumption

Church of Santa Maria de la Mar

SEVENTEEN YEARS had gone by.

In the square outside Santa Maria, Arnau raised his eyes to the sky. The pealing of the bells filled the whole city of Barcelona. The sound made the hairs on his forearms stand on end, and he shuddered as the four church bells chimed. He had stood and watched as the four of them were raised to the bell tower: Assumpta, the largest, weighing almost a ton; Conventual, more than half a ton; Andrea, half that again; and Vedada, the smallest, hauled to the very top of the tower.

Today Santa Maria, his church, was being inaugurated, and the bells seemed to give off a different sound from the one he had heard since they had been installed... or was it he who was hearing them differently? He looked up at the octagonal towers flanking the main façade: they were tall, slender, and light, built in three levels, each one narrower than the one below. They had tall arched windows open to the winds, with balustrades round the outside, and were topped by flat roofs. While they were being built, Arnau had been assured they would be simple, natural, with no spires or capitals—as natural as the sea, whose patron saint they were there to protect—and yet at the same time imposing and full of fantasy, as the sea also was.

People dressed in their finest were congregating at Santa Maria. Some went straight into the church; others, like Arnau, stayed outside to admire its beauty and listen to its bells’ music. Arnau drew Mar to him. He was holding her on his right-hand side; to his left, tall, sharing his father’s joy, stood a youth of thirteen, with a birthmark by his right eye.

Surrounded by his family, and with the bells still ringing, Arnau went into Santa Maria de la Mar. The others entering the church stopped to allow him through. This was Arnau Estanyol’s church. As a bastaix, he had carried its first stones on his back. As a moneylender and consul of the sea, he had offered it important donations. More recently, as a maritime insurance agent, he had donated more funds. Santa Maria had suffered its fair share of catastrophes: on the twenty-eighth of February, 1373, an earthquake that devastated Barcelona brought its bell tower crashing to the ground. Arnau was the first to contribute to its rebuilding.

“I need money,” he had said to Guillem on that occasion.

“It is yours,” replied the Moor, well aware of the disaster and of the fact that a member of the commission of works for Santa Maria had visited him that same morning.

The fact was, fortune had smiled on them once more. On Guillem’s advice, Arnau had dedicated himself to maritime insurance. Unlike Genoa, Venice, or Pisa, Catalonia had no such provision, which made it a paradise for the first people to venture into this area of commerce. However, it was only the wise few like Arnau and Guillem who managed to survive. The Catalan financial system was on the verge of collapse, and threatened to take with it all those who had hoped to make quick profits either by insuring a cargo for more than its worth, which was often the last they heard of it, or by offering insurance on ships and goods even after it was known they had been seized by pirates, in the hope that the news was false. But Arnau and Guillem chose their ships and the risk involved carefully, and soon they had the same vast network of agents working for them in their new business as they had used in times gone by.

On the twenty-sixth of December of 1379, Arnau could no longer ask Guillem if he might use some of their money for Santa Maria. The Moor had died suddenly a year earlier. Arnau had found him sitting in his chair out in the garden, as usual facing Mecca, to where, in what was an open secret, he always prayed. Arnau informed the members of the Moorish community, and they took Guillem’s body away under cover of night.

That night in December 1379, Santa Maria had been ravaged by a terrible fire. It reduced the sacristy, choir, organs, altars, and everything else in the interior not made of stone to a pile of ashes. The stonework too suffered the effects of the fire, and the keystone depicting King Alfonso the Benign, father of Pedro the Ceremonious (who had paid for this part of the work), was completely destroyed.

The king flew into a rage at the destruction of this homage to his august forebear, and demanded the effigy be re-created. The La Ribera neighborhood had too much to worry about to pay much heed to the monarch’s demands. All their money and effort went into a new sacristy, choir, organs, and altars; the equestrian figure of King Alfonso was cleverly reconstructed in plaster, stuck onto the stone, and painted red and gold.

On the third of November 1383, the last keystone above the central nave, the one closest to the main door, was put in place. On the end was sculpted the coat of arms of the commission of works, in honor of all the anonymous citizens who had contributed to the construction of the church.

Arnau glanced up at the keystone. Mar and Bernat did the same, and then, wreathed in smiles, the three of them made their way to the high altar.

From the moment the heavy keystone had been lifted onto its scaffold, waiting for the columns of the arches to reach up to it, Arnau had repeated the same thing over and over: “That is our emblem,” he told his son.

“Father,” Bernat retorted, “that’s the people of Barcelona’s emblem. Important people like you have their coats of arms engraved on the arches, the columns, in the chapels and in ...” Arnau raised his hand to try to stem the flow of his son’s words, but the boy rushed on: “You don’t even have your stall in the choir!”

“This is the church of the people, my boy. Many men have given their lives for it, yet their names are nowhere to be found.”

In his mind’s eye, Arnau saw himself as a youngster carrying blocks of stone from the royal quarry down to Santa Maria.

“Your father,” Mar said, “has engraved many of these stones with his blood. There can be no greater homage than that.”

Bernat turned to look at his father, eyes wide open.

“I and many others, my son,” said Arnau, “many, many others.”

August in the Mediterranean, August in Barcelona. The sun was shining with a splendor hard to equal anywhere else on earth. Before it filtered in through the stained glass of Santa Maria and played on color and stone inside, the sea reflected the light back to the sun, lending its rays an unmatched beauty. Inside the church, the shafts of light mingled with the quivering flames of thousands of candles lit on the high altar and the side chapels. The smell of incense filled the air, and organ music swelled in the perfect acoustics of the central nave.

Arnau, Mar, and Bernat walked up to the high altar. Beneath the magnificent apse, surrounded by eight graceful columns and in front of a reredos, stood the small figure of the Virgin of the Sea. Behind the altar, which was covered in fine French lace that King Pedro had lent for the occasion (not without sending word beforehand from Vilafranca del Penedès that the cloths should be returned immediately after the celebration), Bishop Pere de Planella was preparing to say mass to consecrate the church.

Santa Maria was so full that the three of them could not get close to the altar. Some of those in the congregation recognized Arnau and stood back to let him through, but he thanked them and stood where he was among the crowd: they were his people, his family. The only ones missing were Guillem ... and Joan. Arnau preferred to remember his brother as the young boy with whom he had discovered the world rather than as the bitter monk who had sacrificed himself in flames.

Bishop Pere de Planella began the mass.

Arnau was troubled. Guillem, Joan, Maria, his father... and that old woman. Why whenever he thought of those no longer with him did he always end up remembering her? He had asked Guillem to search for her and Aledis.

“They have vanished,” the Moor told him.

“They said she was my mother,” Arnau said out loud. “Search harder.”

“I haven’t been able to find them,” Guillem told him again, some time later.

“But ...”

“Forget them,” Guillem had advised him, in a tone that brooked no argument.

Pere de Planella was still saying mass.

Arnau was sixty-three years old. He felt tired, and leaned on his son.

Bernat squeezed his father’s arm affectionately. Arnau bent his mouth to his son’s ear and pointed toward the high altar.

“Can you see her smile, my son?” he asked.

Author’s Note

IN WRITING THIS novel I have closely followed the Crónica written by King Pedro the Third, adapting it where necessary to the requirements of a work of fiction.

The choice of Navarcles as the site of the castle and estates of the lord of Navarcles is entirely fictional, but the baronies of Granollers, San Vicenc dels Horts, and Caldes de Montbui, which King Pedro offers Arnau as the dowry for his ward Eleonor (another fictional creation), did exist. These baronies were ceded in 1380 by the infante Martin, son of Pedro the Ceremonious, to Guillem Ramon de Montcada, of the Sicilian branch of the Montcada family, as reward for his good offices in support of the marriage between Queen María and one of Martin’s sons, who subsequently reigned and was known as “the Humane.” Guillem de Montcada held these estates for a much shorter time than the protagonist of my novel: no sooner had he been granted them than he sold them to the Count of Urgell and used the money to equip a fleet and dedicate himself to piracy.

According to the Usatges of Catalonia, a feudal lord did have the right to lie with the bride of any of his serfs on her wedding night. The existence of privileges in old Catalonia, compared to the new Catalan territories, led the serfs to rebel repeatedly against their lords, until the 1486 Judgment of Guadalupe abolished these privileges, although it did stipulate at the same time that the lords stripped of their rights in this way should be paid generous compensation.

The royal judgment against Joan’s mother, which obliged her to live enclosed in a room on bread and water until her death, was pronounced in 1330 by Alfonso the Third against a woman by the name of Eulàlia, consort of one Juan Dosca.

The author in no way shares the opinions about women or peasants expressed throughout this novel: nearly all of them have been faithfully copied from the book written by the monk Francesc Eiximenis, approximately in the year 1381, entitled Lo crestià.

As occurs with the marriage between Mar and Felip de Ponts, in medieval Catalonia rapists could marry their victims, even if the abduction had been a violent one, thanks to the Usatge “Si quis virginem.” This was not true in the rest of Spain, which was governed by the legal tradition of the Visigoths in the Fuero Juzgo, which prohibited it.

The violator’s duty was to provide the woman with a dowry so that she could find a husband, or to marry her himself. If she was married, she was treated as an adulteress.

No one is sure whether the episode in which King Jaime of Mallorca tries to abduct his brother-in-law Pedro the Third, which fails because a friar who is close to Pedro hears details of the plot during confession (helped in the novel by Joan), actually happened or not. It may well have been invented by Pedro the Third as an excuse for the legal action taken by him against the king of Mallorca, which ended with his requisitioning his kingdoms. What does appear to be true is King Jaime’s demand to have a wooden bridge built to link his galleys, anchored in the port of Barcelona, with Framenors convent. Perhaps this served to arouse King Pedro’s imagination to invent the plot mentioned in his chronicles.

The attempt to invade Barcelona by Pedro the Cruel of Castille is described in minute detail in Pedro the Third’s Crónica. The buildup of land along the Barcelona coast meant that its earlier harbors could no longer be used, with the result that the city was defenseless against natural phenomena and enemy attacks. It was not until 1340 that, during the reign of Alfonso the Magnanimous, a new, more adequate port was built.

The sea battle took place as Pedro the Third describes it, and the Castillian fleet was prevented from gaining access to the city because a ship—a carrack, according to the medieval chronicles of Capmany—was grounded on the offshore tasques (sandbanks) to halt their advance. It was during this battle that the first references are made to the use of artillery—a bricola mounted on the prow of the king’s galley—in naval warfare. It was not long before ships, which until then had been used chiefly as a means of troop transport, were equipped with heavy cannons, changing the whole concept of naval battles. In his Crónica, Pedro the Third delights in the way that the Catalan host ranged on the shore, or in the numerous small craft that set out to defend the capital mocked and insulted Pedro the Cruel’s army. He considers it, together with the effective use of the bricola, as one of the main reasons why the king of Castille was forced to reconsider his plans to invade Barcelona.

In the revolt of Plaza del Blat during the first so-called bad year, when the citizens of Barcelona demanded they be given grain, the leaders were given summary justice and hanged. For plot reasons, I have placed these executions in Plaza del Blat. It is also true that the authorities thought that a simple oath could help put a stop to the hunger.

Another person who was executed, in the year 1360, was the money changer F. Castelló. As stipulated by law, he was beheaded outside his countinghouse, close to what nowadays is Plaza Palacio.

In 1367, after being accused of profaning a host and having been locked in the synagogue without food or water, three Jews were executed on the orders of infante Don Juan, King Pedro’s deputy.

Jews were strictly forbidden to leave their houses during the Christian Holy Week. They were also ordered to keep the doors and windows of their homes closed so that they could not see or interfere with the numerous processions. Even so, Easter saw an increase in the fears of the Christian fanatics, and accusations of the celebration of heretical rites also grew at a time of year that the Jews came to have just reason to fear.

Two main accusations were made against the Jews during Easter: the ritual murder of Christians, and especially children, in order to crucify and torture them, drink their blood, or eat their hearts; and the profanation of the host. Both of these were commonly seen as designed to re-create the pain and suffering of Christ believed in by the Catholics.

The first known accusation of the crucifixion of a Christian child comes from the Holy Roman Empire in Würzburg, Germany, in 1147. As was so often the case with accusations against the Jews, popular feeling led to similar charges quickly spreading throughout Europe. Only a year later, in 1148, the English Jews in the city of Norwich were accused of crucifying another Christian boy. From then on, accusations of ritual murder, usually during Easter and often involving crucifixion, became widespread: Gloucester, 1168; Fulda, 1235; Lincoln, 1255, Munich, 1286 ... Hatred of the Jews and popular credulity were so strong that in the fifteenth century an Italian Franciscan friar, Bernardino da Feltre, predicted that a Christian child was to be crucified: an event that actually happened in Trent, where the little boy Simon was found dead on a cross. The Catholic Church beatified Simon, but the friar went on “prophesying” further crucifixions, in Reggio, Bassano, and Mantua. Simon was a martyr of fanaticism rather than faith, but it was not until midway through the twentieth century that the Catholic Church finally annulled his beatification.

One occasion when the Barcelona host was summoned—although this took place in the year 1369, later than I have situated it in the book—was against the village of Creixell, when the local lord prevented the free passage and grazing of cattle headed for Barcelona, where by law the animals had to arrive alive. The seizure of animals was one of the main reasons why the host was called upon to defend the city’s privileges against other towns and feudal lords.

Santa Maria de la Mar is without doubt one of the most beautiful churches to be found anywhere. It may lack the monumentality of others built at the same time or later, but its interior is filled with the spirit with which Berenguer de Montagut sought to infuse it: the people’s church, built by the people of Barcelona for Barcelona, is like an airy Catalan farmhouse. It is austere, protected, and protecting, and the light of the Mediterranean sets it apart from any other church in the world.

According to the experts, the great virtue of Santa Maria is that it was built over an uninterrupted period of fifty-five years. This means it benefits from a unified architectural style, with few elements added on, making it the leading example of Catalan Gothic. As was usual at that time, and in order not to interrupt the religious services, Santa Maria was built on and around the former construction. Initially, the architect Bassegoda Amigó placed the original church on the corner of Calle Espaseria. He calculated that the new church had been built in front of the old one, farther to the north, with what nowadays is Calle Santa Maria between them. However, when a new presbytery and crypt were being built in 1966, the discovery of a Roman necropolis underneath Santa Maria led to a modification of Bassegoda’s original idea. His grandson, also an architect and expert on Santa Maria, asserts that the successive versions of Santa Maria were always built on the same spot, one on top of the other. The Roman cemetery is said to have been where the body of Santa Eulàlia, patron saint of Barcelona, was buried. As described in the novel, her remains were transferred by King Pedro from Santa Maria to the cathedral.

The statue of the Virgin of the Sea that figures in the novel is the one now on the high altar, and was previously part of the tympanum of the main doorway in Calle del Born.

Nothing is known of the bells of Santa Maria until 1714, when King Felipe the Fifth of Castille defeated the Catalans. The king imposed a special tax on church bells in Catalonia in reprisal for the way they were constantly rung to call Catalan patriots to sometent, that is, to take up arms to defend their land. It was not only the Castillians who were enraged by bells calling citizens to defend a city. Pedro the Ceremonious himself, after he had put down an uprising in Valencia, ordered that the leaders of the uprising be killed by forcing them to swallow molten metal from the Union bell that had rung to call the people of Valencia to battle.

Santa Maria occupied such a special place in Barcelona that King Pedro did choose to urge the citizens to aid him in his campaign against Sardinia from the square in front of it, rather than the Plaza del Blat outside the magistrate’s palace.

The humble bastaixos, the port workers who offered to carry blocks of stone to Santa Maria without payment, are the clearest example of the popular fervor that helped build the church. The parish accorded them many privileges, and even today their devotion to the cult of Mary can be seen in the bronze figures on the main doorway and reliefs in the presbytery or marble capitals, on all of which are portrayed figures of port workmen.

The Jew Hasdai Crescas existed. There was also a Bernat Estanyol, who was a captain of the Company of Almogavars. I deliberately chose the first of these two; the second is a simple coincidence. But it was my decision to make Crescas a moneylender, and the details of his life are my invention. In 1391, seven years after the official inauguration of Santa Maria (and more than a century before the Catholic monarchs ordered the expulsion of the Jews from their kingdoms), the Barcelona Jewry was burned down by the people. Its inhabitants were put to death, while those who managed to avoid death, by, for example, seeking refuge in a convent, were forced to convert to Christianity. The Barcelona Jewry was totally destroyed, and churches were built inside it, until King Juan, worried at the economic consequences for the royal coffers upon the disappearance of the Jews, attempted to coax them back to the city. He promised them tax exemptions until their community reached two hundred members, and annulled specific impositions such as having to give up their beds and other furniture whenever the royal court was visiting the city, or having to feed the lions and other wild animals kept by the sovereign. The Jews did not return, however, so that in 1397 the king conceded to Barcelona the right not to have a Jewry.

The grand inquisitor general Nicolau Eimerich took refuge with the pope in Avignon, but on the death of King Pedro returned to Catalonia and continued his attacks on the works of Ramon Llull. In 1393, King Juan banished him from Catalonia, and the inquisitor again sought refuge with the pope. However, that same year Eimerich returned to Seu d’Urgell, so that King Juan had to urge the bishop to expel him at once. Nicolau fled to Avignon a second time, but on the death of King Juan was granted permission by King Martin the Humane to spend the last years of his life in his native Girona, where he died at the age of eighty. The references to Eimerich’s assertions that torturing several times was merely a continuation of the first torture, and on the conditions in which prisoners should be held, are true.

Unlike Castille, where the Inquisition was created only in 1487, Catalan Inquisition tribunals had existed since 1249. These were completely separate from and independent of the traditional ecclesiastical jurisdiction as exercised by the Episcopal tribunals. This early establishment of the Inquisition in Catalonia is explained by its original objectives: to fight against heresy, which at that time was identified with the Cathars in the south of France and the Waldensians who followed Pedro Valdés in Lyons. Both these doctrines, considered heretical by the Catholic Church, found supporters among the inhabitants of old Catalonia because of geographical proximity. Many Catalan nobles in the Pyrenees became part of these movements, including Viscount Arnau and his wife, Ermessenda; Ramon, lord of Cadí; and Guillem de Niort, magistrate for Count Nuño Sane in the Cerdagne and Coflent.

This explains why the Inquisition began its sad journey through the Iberian Peninsula in Catalonia. In 1286, however, the Cathar movement was finally extinguished, and by the fourteenth century the Catalan Inquisition was being instructed by Pope Clement the Fifth to direct its efforts against the banned order of the Knights Templar, as was happening in the neighboring kingdom of France. In Catalonia, however, the Knights were not regarded with such antipathy as they were by the French king (although this was principally for economic reasons). At a provincial synod called by the archbishop of Tarragona, the bishops unanimously adopted a resolution declaring the Knights Templar free of all blame, and finding no reason to accuse them of heresy.

After the Templars, the Catalan Inquisition turned its attention to the Beghards, who had also won support in Catalonia. Several death sentences were passed, which, as was customary, were carried out by the secular authorities after the accused was handed over to them. By 1348, with the attacks on Jewries throughout Europe following the outbreak of the Black Death and widespread accusations against the Jews, the Catalan Inquisition began to persecute those whom it regarded as befriending or sympathizing with Jews.

My thanks go to my wife, Carmen, without whom this novel would not have been possible; to Pau Pérez, who has lived it with as much passion as I have; to the Escola d’Escriptura of the Ateneo of Barcelona for their wonderful work in teaching and spreading Catalan literature; and also to my agent, Sandra Bruna, and my editor, Ana Liarás.

~Barcelona, November 2005

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ildefonso Falcones lives in Barcelona with his wife and four children and works as a lawyer. Cathedral of the Sea is intended as a homage to a people who built one of the most beautiful churches on earth in only fifty-five years, which was remarkable for that time. First published in Spain, where it has become a publishing phenomenon, Cathedral of the Sea has been published in thirty-two countries, winning the Euskadi de Plata 2006 for the best novel in Spanish, the Qué Leer 2007 Prize for the best book, and the prestigious Italian Giovanni Boccaccio 2007 award for best foreign author.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

Nick Caistor is an award-winning translator of more than thirty books from Spain and Latin America. He has edited The Faber Book of Contemporary Latin American Fiction and has translated other Barcelona-based writers, such as Eduardo Mendoza, Juan Marsé, and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

PART ONE - Chained to the Land

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

PART TWO - Chained to the Nobility

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

PART THREE - Chained to Passion

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

PART FOUR - Chained to Destiny

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Author’s Note