Cathedral of the Sea

by Ildefonso Falcones

  Arnau imagined himself wielding a sword, swarming up a ladder, shouting victoriously on the battlements of Creixell castle: “Who dares stand against the Barcelona sagramental?” All the men around the fire could see how excited he was: he was staring intently into the flames, his hands clasping a stick he had previously used to poke the fire with. “I, Arnau Estanyol ...” The sound of their laughter brought him back to Sitges.

  “Go and sleep,” Ramon advised him, getting up with Joanet in his arms. Arnau made a face. “You can dream of battles,” the bastaix said to console him.

  The night air was cool, but one of the men gave up his blanket for the two boys.

  At dawn the next day the army resumed its march on Creixell. They passed through the villages and castles of Geltrú, Vilanova, Cubelles, Segur, and Barà. From Barà, they turned inland toward Creixell. About a mile from the sea, the lord of Creixell had built his castle on rocks at the crest of a ridge. It boasted several towers; the houses of the village were clustered round them.

  By now it was only a few hours before nightfall. The leaders of the guilds were called together by the councillors and the magistrate. Then the army of Barcelona lined up in battle formation outside Creixell, with banners waving in front of it. Arnau and Joanet roamed behind the lines, offering water to any bastaix who wanted some. Most of them refused, their eyes fixed on the castle. Nobody spoke, and the children did not dare break the silence. The leaders returned and each took his place at the head of a guild. Everyone in the ranks watched as three ambassadors from Barcelona strode toward Creixell; the same number came out of the castle, and the two groups met halfway down the hill.

  Like everyone else in the citizens’ army, Arnau and Joanet watched the negotiations without a word.

  In the end, there was no battle. The lord of Creixell had managed to escape through a secret tunnel that led from the castle to the beach, behind the army. When he saw Barcelona’s army drawn up in the valley, the village mayor gave the order to comply with all the city’s demands. The villagers released the flock and the shepherd, agreed to pay a large sum of money in compensation, promised to obey and respect Barcelona’s privileges in the future, and handed over two men who they said were to blame for the insult. They were taken prisoner at once.

  “Creixell has surrendered,” the ambassadors informed the army.

  A murmur ran through the ranks. The occasional soldiers sheathed their swords, put down their crossbows and spears, and took off their armor. Soon, shouts of triumph, jokes, and laughter could be heard on all sides.

  “Where’s the wine, boys?” Ramon teased them. “What’s the matter?” he said, seeing them rooted to the spot. “You would have liked to have seen a battle, wouldn’t you?”

  The expression on their faces spoke for itself.

  “But any one of us could have been wounded, or even killed. Would you have liked that?” Arnau and Joanet quickly shook their heads. “You should see it in another light: you belong to the biggest and most powerful city in the principality. Everyone is afraid of challenging us.” Arnau and Joanet listened, wide-eyed.

  “Go and fetch wine, boys. You’ll have the chance to drink to our victory too.”

  The flag of Sant Jordi returned with honor to Barcelona. Alongside it strode the two boys, proud of their city, its citizens, and of being part of everything. The Creixell prisoners were paraded through the streets in chains. Women and crowds of curious onlookers applauded the army and spat on the captives. Stern-faced and proud, Arnau and Joanet marched with the others all the way to the magistrate’s palace, where the prisoners were handed over. Then they went to visit Bernat, who, relieved to see his son back safe and sound, soon forgot the scolding he was going to give him, and instead listened contentedly to the story of his new adventures.

  12

  SEVERAL MONTHS HAD gone by since the excitement that had taken him to Creixell, but little had changed in Arnau’s life. While he waited for his tenth birthday, when he would become an apprentice in Grau’s workshop, he spent his days with Joanet, roaming the streets of the fascinating city, giving the bastaixos water, and above all, enjoying watching the new Santa Maria church grow. He prayed to the Virgin and told her all his worries, delighting in the smile he thought he could see on her lips.

  As Father Albert had told him, when the main altar of the Romanesque church disappeared, the Virgin was taken to the small Jesus chapel in the ambulatory behind the new main altar, between two buttresses and protected by tall, strong iron bars. It was the bastaixos who provided for the chapel. They were the ones who looked after it, guarded it, cleaned it, and made sure it was always lit by fresh candles. Although it was the most important chapel in the new church, the place where the sacraments were kept, the parish had granted it to these humble workers from the port of Barcelona. Many nobles and rich merchants were happy to pay to build and endow the other thirty-three chapels that would be part of Santa Maria de la Mar, Father Albert told them. But this one, the Jesus chapel, belonged to the bastaixos, so the young water carrier never had any problem getting close to the Virgin.

  One morning, Bernat was sorting through the few possessions he kept under their pallet. It was here that he hid the coins he had managed to rescue during their flight from his farmhouse nine years earlier, and the meager wage his brother-in-law paid him, which would nevertheless help Arnau get on once he had learned the potter’s trade. All of a sudden, Jaume entered the room. Surprised because the assistant usually never came there, Bernat stood up.

  “What is it?”

  “Your sister has died,” Jaume said hurriedly.

  Bernat could feel his legs giving way. He flopped onto the mattress, money bag still in hand.

  “Wha ... What happened?” he stammered.

  “The master does not know. Her body was cold this morning.”

  Bernat dropped the bag and buried his face in his hands. By the time he lowered them again and looked up, Jaume had disappeared. With a lump in his throat, Bernat recalled the little girl who had worked in the fields alongside him and his father, the girl who never stopped singing as she looked after the animals. Bernat had often seen his father pause in his task and close his eyes, allowing himself to be carried away for a few moments by her happy, carefree voice. And now ...

  Arnau’s face showed no reaction when his father told him the news at mealtime.

  “Did you hear me, son?” Bernat insisted.

  Arnau merely nodded. It was more than a year since he had seen Guiamona, apart from the increasingly rare occasions when he climbed the tree to watch her playing with his cousins. Hidden in the branches, he would shed silent tears as he spied on them as they laughed and ran about, none of them ... He felt like telling his father that it did not matter, because Guiamona had no love for him, but when he saw how sad his father looked, he said nothing.

  “Father.” Arnau went up to him.

  Bernat embraced his son.

  “Don’t cry,” said Arnau, pressing his head into his father’s chest. Bernat hugged him, and Arnau responded by wrapping his arms round him.

  THEY WERE EATING quietly with the slaves and apprentices when they heard the first howl. It was a piercing shriek that seemed to rend the air. They all looked toward the big house.

  “Paid wailers,” one of the apprentices said. “My mother is one. It might even be her. She’s the best wailer in the city,” he added proudly.

  Arnau sought his father’s face. Another howl resounded, and Bernat saw his son flinch.

  “We’ll hear lots more,” he told him. “I’ve heard that Grau has hired a lot of wailing women.”

  He was right. All that afternoon and night, as people came to visit the Grau house to offer their condolences, women could be heard mourning Guiamona’s death. Neither Bernat nor his son could sleep because of the constant keening.

  “The whole of Barcelona knows,” Joanet told Arnau the next morning when the two of them managed to meet up in the crush of people that had formed outside
Grau’s gates. Arnau shrugged. “They’ve all come for the funeral,” Joanet added, noticing his friend’s indifferent shrug.

  “Why?”

  “Because Grau is rich, and anyone who accompanies him is to be given mourning clothes,” said Joanet, showing him a long black tunic he was carrying. “Like this one,” he said with a smile.

  By midmorning, when everyone had donned their black clothes, the funeral procession set off for Nazaret church. It was here that the chapel to Saint Hippolytus, the patron saint of potters, was to be found. The paid mourners walked alongside the coffin, crying, howling, and tearing their hair.

  The church was full of the rich and famous: aldermen from several guilds, city councillors, and most of the members of the Council of a Hundred. Now that Guiamona was dead, nobody was concerned about the Estanyol family, and Bernat succeeded in pushing his way through people dressed in the simple garments Grau had given out, as well as others wearing silks, byssus, and expensive black linen, until he and his son reached his sister’s coffin. He was not even allowed to bid her a proper farewell.

  STANDING AT BERNAT’S side while the priests conducted the funeral service, Arnau caught glimpses of his cousins’ faces, puffy from crying. Josep and Genis looked calm and composed, but Margarida, although she sat up straight, could not prevent her lower lip from constantly trembling. They had lost their mother, just like him. Did they know about the Virgin? Arnau wondered, looking across at his uncle, who sat there stiff as ever. He was sure that Grau Puig would not tell them about her. He had always heard that the rich were different; perhaps they had a different way of finding a new mother.

  THEY CERTAINLY DID. A rich widower in Barcelona, and one with ambitions ... Even before the period of mourning had finished, Grau began to receive offers of marriage. In the end, the one chosen to be the new mother for Guiamona’s children was Isabel. She was young and unattractive, but she was a noble. Grau had weighed the advantages of all the candidates, but eventually chose the only one from a noble family. Her dowry was a title that brought with it no privileges, lands, or riches, but would help him join a class that had always been closed to him. What did he care about the substantial dowries that some merchants offered him in their anxiety to share his wealth? The important noble families in Barcelona were not interested in a widower who, however rich he might be, was nothing more than a potter: only Isabel’s father, who was penniless, could see that Grau’s character might help him make an alliance that would benefit both parties. And so it proved.

  “You will understand,” his future father-in-law insisted, “that my daughter cannot live in a potter’s workshop.” Grau nodded. “And that she cannot marry a simple potter.” Grau tried to protest, but his father-in-law dismissed him with a wave of the hand. “Grau,” he went on, “we nobles cannot stoop to working as artisans. You surely understand that? We may not be rich, but we will never be craftsmen.”

  “We nobles cannot ...” Grau tried to hide his satisfaction at being included as one of them. His father-in-law was right: which of the city nobles had a workshop? My lord baron: from now on that was how he would be known in his commercial dealings, and in the Council of a Hundred ... My lord baron! How could a Catalan baron have a workshop?

  As alderman of the guild, he could smooth the way for Jaume to be made a master potter. They talked the matter over. Grau was in a hurry to wed Isabel, obsessed by the fear that the fickle nobleman might change his mind. The baron-to-be had no time to put his business up for sale. So Jaume would become a master potter, and Grau would sell him the workshop and the house, in installments. There was only one problem:

  “I’ve got four sons,” Jaume told him. “I’ll find it hard enough to pay you for the business ...” Grau encouraged him to go on: “I can’t take on all the responsibilities you have: the slaves, the craftsmen, the apprentices ... I wouldn’t even be able to feed them! If I want to succeed, I’m going to have to manage with my four sons.”

  The date for the wedding was set. At the urging of Isabel’s father, Grau bought an expensive mansion in Calle de Montcada, where many of Barcelona’s noble families lived.

  “Remember,” his father-in-law warned him as they left the new mansion, “you are not to go into church with a potter’s workshop still on your hands.”

  They had inspected every nook and cranny of his new house. The baron had nodded condescendingly while Grau was mentally calculating how much it was going to cost him to fill all those rooms. In the mansion behind the gateway onto Calle de Montcada there was a cobbled yard. At the far end stood the stables, which took up most of the ground floor, together with the kitchens and the slaves’ bedrooms. On the right-hand side of the yard was a broad stone staircase, which led up to the first floor of the house proper, with the principal chambers and rooms. Above that there was another floor, with the family bedrooms. The whole mansion was made of stone; the two principal floors had rows of Gothic windows that gave onto the yard.

  “Very well,” Grau said to the man who for years had been his chief assistant, “you are free of those responsibilities.”

  They signed the contract that very day. Grau proudly took it to show his future father-in-law.

  “I’ve sold the workshop,” he announced.

  “My lord baron,” the other man said, holding out his hand.

  “What now?” Grau thought when he was alone again. “The slaves are no problem; I’ll keep those that are of use to me, and those who aren’t... can be sold. As for the craftsmen and apprentices ...”

  Grau spoke to the other members of the guild and was able to place them all for modest sums. The only ones left were his brother-in-law and his son. Bernat had no official position within the guild: he was not even a certified craftsman. Nobody would have him in their workshop, even if it was not forbidden. The boy had not even begun his apprenticeship, but there was the question of the contract. Besides, how could Grau possibly ask anyone to take on members of the Estanyol family? Everybody would find out that those two fugitives were his relatives. They were called Estanyol, just like Guiamona. Everybody would discover that he had sheltered two landless serfs, and now that he was to become a nobleman ... weren’t the nobles the fiercest enemies of all runaway serfs? Wasn’t it they who were trying to put pressure on the king to abolish the laws allowing serfs to leave the land? How could he become a noble if the name of the Estanyol family was on everyone’s lips? What would his father-in-law say?

  “You are to come with me,” he told Bernat, who for several days now had been worried by the new turn of events.

  As the new owner of the workshop, and consequently free of any commitment to Grau, Jaume had sat Bernat down earlier and talked openly to him. “Grau won’t dare do anything to you. I know, because he told me as much. He doesn’t want people to hear of your situation. I’ve got a good deal here, Bernat. He is in a hurry; he wants everything settled before he marries Isabel. You have a signed contract for your son. You should take advantage of that, and put pressure on that rogue. Threaten to take him to the tribunal. You are a good man. I hope you understand that everything that has happened in these past years ...”

  Bernat did understand. And, thanks to the former assistant’s support, he decided to go and confront his brother-in-law.

  “What was that you said?” shouted Grau when Bernat answered him with a brief “Where and what for?” “Where I say, and for whatever I wish,” he went on, nervously flinging his arms in the air.

  “We are not your slaves, Grau.”

  “You don’t have much choice.”

  Bernat cleared his throat, then followed Jaume’s advice.

  “I could go to the tribunal.”

  Tense, shaken, Grau raised his small, skinny body out of his chair, but Bernat did not back down, however much he would have liked to have run from the room: the threat of the tribunal worked wonders.

  HE AND HIS son would look after the horses that Grau had been forced to buy along with the mansion. “You can’t possibly h
ave empty stables,” his father-in-law had commented in passing, as though talking to a slow child. Grau was busy adding up all the costs in his mind. “My daughter Isabel has always had horses,” the other man added.

  But the most important thing for Bernat was the good wage he obtained for himself and for Arnau, who was also going to start working with the horses. They could live outside the mansion, in a room of their own, without slaves or apprentices. He and his son would have enough money to get by.

  It was Grau himself who urged Bernat to annul Arnau’s existing contract as a potter’s apprentice and to sign a new one.

  EVER SINCE HE had been granted the status of a freeman, Bernat had seldom left Grau’s workshop. Whenever he had done so, it had been on his own or with Arnau. It did not seem as though there were any outstanding warrants against him: his name was registered on the list of Barcelona citizens. Every time he went out into the street, he reassured himself, thinking that they would surely have come for him by now. What he most liked was to walk down to the beach and join the dozens of men who worked on the sea. He would stand staring out at the horizon, feeling the sea breeze on his face and enjoying the tangy smells from the beach, the boats, the tar ...

  It was almost ten years since he had struck the lad at the forge. He hoped he had not killed him. Arnau and Joanet were scampering around him, staring up at him bright-eyed, smiles on their lips.

  “Our own house!” Arnau had shouted earlier. “Let’s live in La Ribera, please!”

  “I’m afraid it will be only one room,” Bernat had tried to explain, but his son went on smiling as though they were moving to the city’s grandest palace.

  “It’s not a bad area,” Jaume said when Bernat told him his son’s suggestion. “You can find a good room there.”

  That was where the three of them were heading now. The boys were running around as usual; Bernat was carrying their few belongings.