Cathedral of the Sea

by Ildefonso Falcones

  Arnau said nothing for some time. The whole army was waiting to hear what he had to say. Joan took advantage to glance round at Eleonor, and thought he could see a triumphant smile on her lips.

  “Do you mean to say that all this is my fault?” Arnau asked Joan.

  “Mine, Arnau, mine. It’s I who should have instructed you concerning the laws of the Church, and what God’s designs for mankind are, but I never did ... and am sorry for it.”

  Guillem’s eyes were blazing.

  “What are the girl’s wishes?” Arnau asked Felip de Ponts.

  “I am a knight of King Pedro,” the other man replied, “and his laws, the exact same ones that have brought you here today, take no account of the wishes of a woman of marrying age.” A mutter of approval ran through the ranks of the host. “I, Felip de Ponts, a Catalan knight, am offering my hand in marriage. If you, Arnau Estanyol, baron of Catalonia and consul of the sea, do not consent to the marriage, then take me prisoner and judge me. But if you do consent, then the girl’s wishes are of little importance.”

  “This is not about her wishes, Arnau,” Joan insisted, lowering his voice. “It’s about your duty. Fulfill it. Nobody asks their daughters’ or their wards’ opinion. The decision as to what is best for them is taken on their behalf. This man has lain with Mar. What she wishes does not really matter now. Either she marries him or her life will be hell. You are the one to decide, Arnau: another senseless death, or the divine solution to our lack of care.”

  Arnau turned to his companions. He saw Guillem still staring at the knight, bristling with hatred. He saw Eleonor, the wife the king had forced on him. They met each other’s gaze. Arnau gestured to her for her opinion. Eleonor nodded. Arnau turned back to Joan.

  “It’s the law,” Joan insisted.

  Arnau looked at the knight, then at the army. They had all lowered their weapons. None of the three thousand men seemed to dismiss Felip de Ponts’s arguments: none of them wanted war. They were all waiting for Arnau’s decision. Such was the law of Catalonia, the law regarding women. What was to be gained by fighting, killing the knight, and freeing Mar? What would her life be like now that she had been abducted and raped? Would she spend it in a convent?

  “I give my consent.”

  There was a moment’s silence. Then, as Arnau’s decision spread through them, a murmur rose from the ranks of soldiers. Someone shouted his approval. Another man agreed. Several more joined in, until the entire host acclaimed it.

  Joan and Eleonor glanced at each other.

  A hundred yards away, locked in the tower of Felip de Ponts’s farmhouse, the woman whose future had just been decided was watching the army massed at the foot of the hill outside. Why did they not charge up it? Why did they not attack? What could they be discussing with that wretch? What were they shouting?

  “Arnau? What are your men shouting?”

  45

  IT WAS THE shouts from the host that convinced Guillem that what he had heard was true: “I consent.” He clenched his teeth. Somebody clapped him on the back and joined in the shouting. “I consent.” Guillem stared at Arnau and then at the knight. His face seemed relaxed. What could a mere slave like him do? He looked again at Felip de Ponts: now he was smiling. “I have lain with Mar Estanyol ...” That was what he had said: “I have lain with Mar Estanyol!” How could Arnau ... ?

  Someone thrust a wineskin at him. Guillem pushed it away.

  “Don’t you drink, Christian?” he heard someone ask.

  He caught Arnau’s eye. The city councillors were congratulating Felip de Ponts, who was still on his steed. All around him, soldiers were drinking and laughing.

  “Don’t you drink, Christian?” he heard again behind him.

  Guillem pushed the man off and looked in Arnau’s direction once more. The councillors were congratulating him as well. Despite being surrounded, Arnau met Guillem’s gaze.

  Then the crowd, with Joan among them, forced Arnau to head up the hill to the farmhouse. Arnau was still looking back at Guillem.

  The entire host was celebrating the agreement reached. Some soldiers had lit campfires and sat around them singing.

  “Drink to our consul and the happiness of his daughter,” said another man, again offering him a wineskin.

  Arnau had disappeared on the track up to the house.

  Guillem pushed the wineskin away again.

  “Are you refusing to drink to ... ?”

  Guillem stared the man in the eye, then turned his back on him and set off walking in the direction of Barcelona. Gradually the noise of the host faded in the distance. Guillem found himself alone on the road back to the city. He walked along, dragging his feet ... dragging along with him his feelings, and what little pride as a man he could still feel as a mere slave. All this he dragged along with him back to Barcelona.

  Arnau refused the cheese that the trembling old woman who looked after Felip de Ponts’s farmhouse offered him. Aldermen and councillors had all crowded into the large room above the stables, where the big stone hearth stood. Arnau looked in vain for Guillem among the crowd of people. Everyone was talking and laughing, calling out to the old woman for her to serve them cheese and wine. Joan and Eleonor stayed close to the hearth; whenever Arnau looked in their direction, they glanced away.

  A sudden whisper in the crowd made him switch his attention to the far end of the room.

  Mar had come in, on Felip de Ponts’s arm. Arnau saw her pull herself free and come running over to him. She was smiling. She threw her arms open, but instead of embracing him, she suddenly stopped and let them fall by her sides.

  Arnau thought he could see a bruise on her cheek.

  “What is going on, Arnau?”

  Arnau turned to Joan for help, but his brother was still looking down at the floor. Everyone in the room was waiting for him to speak.

  “The knight Felip de Ponts has invoked the usatge: Si quis virginem ...,” he muttered at length.

  Mar did not move. A tear started to roll down her cheek. Arnau lifted his hand to brush it away, then thought better of it, and the teardrop slid down Mar’s neck.

  “Your father ...,” Felip de Ponts began to say from behind them, before Arnau could silence him, “the consul of the sea, has consented to your marriage before the entire host of Barcelona.” He rushed through the words before Arnau could stop him ... or change his mind.

  “Is this true?” asked Mar.

  “The only thing that’s true is that I would like to hold you ... kiss you ... have you with me always. Is that what a father should feel?” Arnau thought.

  “Yes, Mar.”

  No more tears appeared in Mar’s eyes. When Felip de Ponts came up and took her arm again, she did not object. Somebody behind Arnau gave a cheer, and all the others joined in. Arnau and Mar were still staring at each other. When a shout of congratulation to the bride and groom rang out, Arnau felt as if he was drowning. Now it was his cheeks that were streaming with tears. Perhaps his brother was right; perhaps Joan had understood what he himself had been unable to see. He had sworn to the Virgin that he would never again be unfaithful to a wife, even if that wife was not of his choosing, out of love for another woman.

  “Father?” Mar beseeched him, reaching out her hand to dry his tears.

  Arnau’s whole body shook when he felt her fingers on his face. He turned on his heel and fled.

  At that moment, out on the lonely, dark road back to the city of Barcelona, a slave raised his eyes to the heavens and heard the ghastly cry of pain issuing from the throat of the girl he had loved and looked after as his own child. He was born a slave and had lived all his life as one. He had learned to love in silence and to stifle his emotions. A slave was not an ordinary man, which was why in his solitude—the only place where no one could restrict his freedom—he had learned to see much farther than all those whose souls were clouded by life. He had seen the love they had for each other, and had prayed to his twin gods that the two he loved most in the world wo
uld seize the chance and free themselves from the chains that bound them far tighter than those a slave had to endure.

  Guillem allowed his tears to flow, something that as a slave he never permitted himself.

  GUILLEM NEVER ENTERED the city. He reached Barcelona while it was still dark, and stood outside the closed San Daniel gate. His little girl had been snatched from him. Perhaps he had not been aware of it, but Arnau had sold her just as if she had been a slave. What would Guillem do in Barcelona? How could he sit where once Mar had sat? How could he walk down streets where he had walked with her, talking, laughing, sharing the secrets of her innermost feelings? What would he do in Barcelona apart from remember her day and night? What future could he have alongside the man who had put an end to both their dreams?

  Guillem turned away from the city and continued along the coast. After two days’ travel he reached the port of Salou, the second-most important in Catalonia. He stared out at the horizon. The sea breeze brought him memories of his childhood in Genoa, of a mother and brothers and sisters he had been cruelly separated from when he was sold to a merchant who began to teach him his trade. Then during a sea voyage, master and slave had been captured by the Catalans, who were constantly at war with Genoa. Guillem was passed from master to master until Hasdai Crescas saw in him qualities far beyond those of a simple workman. Guillem gazed out to sea again, at the ships, the people on board ... Why not Genoa?

  “When does the next ship leave for Lombardy, for Pisa?” The young man rummaged in the papers strewn all over the table in the store. He did not know Guillem, and at first had treated him with a great show of disdain, as he would have any dirty, foul-smelling slave, but as soon as the Moor told him who he was, he remembered what his father had often said to him: “Guillem is the right-hand man of Arnau Estanyol, the consul of the sea, and someone who provides us with our livelihood.”

  “I need writing materials and a quiet place to write in,” Guillem said.

  “I accept your offer of freedom,” he wrote. “I am leaving for Genoa via Pisa, where I will travel in your name, still a slave, and await my letter of emancipation.” What else should he write: that he could not live without Mar? Would his master and friend Arnau be able to? Why remind him of that? “I am going in search of my roots, of my family,” he wrote. “Together with Hasdai, you have been my best friend. Take care of him. I shall be forever grateful to you. May Allah and Santa Maria keep watch over you. I will pray for you.”

  As soon as the galley Guillem had embarked on was making its way out of Salou harbor, the young man who had attended him left for Barcelona.

  VERY SLOWLY, ARNAU signed the letter setting Guillem free. Each stroke of the pen reminded him of something from the past: the plague, the confrontation, the countinghouse, day after day of work, talk, friendship, shared happiness ... As he reached the end, his hand shook, and when he had finished, the feather quill bent double. Both he and Guillem knew the real reason why he had been driven away from Barcelona.

  Arnau returned to the exchange. He ordered that his letter be sent to his agent in Pisa, together with a bill of payment for a small fortune.

  “SHOULD WE NOT wait for Arnau?” Joan asked Eleonor when he came into the dining room and saw her already seated at the table, ready to eat.

  “Are you hungry?” Joan nodded. “Well, if you want supper you had better have some now.”

  The friar sat beside Eleonor at one end of Arnau’s long dining table. Two servants offered them white wheat bread, wine, soup, and roast goose with pepper and onions.

  “Didn’t you say you were hungry?” asked Eleonor when she saw that Joan was merely playing with the food on his plate.

  Joan looked across at his sister-in-law and said nothing. They did not exchange another word that evening.

  Several hours after he had trudged upstairs to his room, Joan heard noises in the palace. Several servants had gone out into the yard to receive Arnau. They would offer him food and he would refuse, just as he had done on the three previous occasions that Joan had decided to wait up for him: Arnau had sat in one of the chambers, and waved away their offers with a weary gesture.

  JOAN COULD HEAR the servants coming back. Then he heard Arnau’s footsteps outside his door, as he slowly made for his bedroom. What could he say to him if he went out and greeted him? He had tried to talk to him on the three occasions he had waited up for him, but Arnau had been completely withdrawn and had answered his brother’s questions in monosyllables : “Do you feel well?” “Yes.” “Did you have a lot of work at the exchange?” “No.” “Are things going well?” No answer. “What about Santa Maria?” “Fine.” In the darkness of his room, Joan buried his face in his hands. Arnau’s footsteps had faded away. What could he talk to him about? About her? How could he hear from Arnau’s lips the fact that he loved her?

  Joan had seen Mar wipe away the tear running down Arnau’s cheek. “Father?” he had heard her say. He had seen Arnau tremble. He had turned and seen Eleonor smile. He had needed to see Arnau suffer to understand... but how could he confess the truth to him now? He could he tell him he had been the one... ? The sight of that tear came back into his mind. Did he love her so much? Would he be able to forget her? Nobody was there to comfort Joan when yet again he got down on his knees and prayed until dawn.

  “I SHOULD LIKE to leave Barcelona.”

  The Dominican prior studied the friar: he looked haggard, with sunken eyes circled with dark lines. His black habit was filthy.

  “Do you think, Brother Joan, that you are capable of taking on the role of inquisitor?”

  “Yes,” Joan assured him. The prior looked him up and down. “If I can only leave Barcelona, I will feel better.”

  “So be it. Next week you are to leave for the north.”

  His destination was a region of small farming villages dedicated to growing crops or raising livestock. They were hidden in valleys and mountains, and their inhabitants were terrified by the arrival of an inquisitor. The Inquisition was nothing new to them: since more than a century earlier, when Ramon de Penyafort was charged by Pope Innocent the Fourth with bringing the institution to the kingdom of Aragon and the principality of Narbonne, these villages had suffered visits from the black friars. Most of the doctrines that the Catholic Church considered heretical came through Catalonia from France: first the Cathars and the Waldensians, then the Beghards and finally the Templars when they were chased out by the French king. The border regions were the first to come under these heretical influences, and many of their nobles were condemned and executed: Viscount Arnau and his wife, Ermessenda; Ramon the lord of Cadí; and Guillem de Niort, the deputy of Count Nuno Sane in the Cerdagne and Coflent. These were the lands Joan was called upon to work in.

  “Your Excellency.” He was greeted by a party of the leading citizens of one of these villages. They all bowed before him.

  “Do not call me ‘Excellency,’” insisted Joan, urging them to straighten up. “Simply say, ‘Brother Joan.’”

  In his brief experience, this scene had already been repeated time and again. The news of his arrival, accompanied by a scribe and half a dozen soldiers from the Holy Office, always preceded him.

  Now he found himself in the main square of the village. He surveyed the four men who still stood in front of him with bowed heads. They had taken off their caps, and shifted uneasily. Although there was no one else in the square, Joan knew that many pairs of hidden eyes were watching him. Did they have so much to hide?

  After being received in this way, Joan knew they would offer him the best lodgings in the village. There he would find a table that was too well stocked for the possibilities of people like these.

  “I only want a piece of cheese, some bread, and water. Take away all the rest and make sure my men are seen to,” he repeated once again after installing himself at the table.

  The kind of house he was put up in was becoming familiar as well. It was a humble, simple dwelling, but stone-built, unlike most of the ot
her buildings that were nothing more than mud or wooden shacks. The table and a few chairs were the only furniture in the room, the center of which was the hearth.

  “Your Excellency must be tired.”

  Joan stared at the cheese on his plate. To get here, he and his men had walked for several hours up rocky tracks in the chill of early morning, their feet muddy and wet from dew. Under the table, he rubbed his aching calf and crossed his right foot over his left to rub that too.

  “Don’t call me ‘Excellency,’” he repeated yet again, “and I am not tired. God does not tolerate tiredness when it is a question of defending his name. We will start as soon as I have had something to eat. Gather the people in the square.”

  Before he had left Barcelona, Joan had asked in Santa Caterina convent to consult the treatise that Pope Gregory the Ninth had written in 1231 describing the procedures to be adopted by itinerant inquisitors.

  “Sinners! Repent!” First came the sermon to the people. The sixty or so inhabitants of the village who had gathered in the square lowered their heads when they heard the friar’s opening words. The black friar’s stern expression paralyzed them. “The fires of hell await you!” The first time he had spoken, he did not know whether he would be able to find the words to address them, but he soon discovered that the more he became aware of the power he had over these terrified peasants, the more easily the words came. “Not one of you will escape! God will not allow black sheep in his flock.” They had to speak out: heresy had to be brought to light. That was his task: to seek out the sins committed in secret, the ones only neighbors, friends, or spouses knew about...