Cathedral of the Sea

by Ildefonso Falcones

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “What is it?” asked Teresa.

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

  “No, you can’t want us to wear...”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  49

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

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

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

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

  “Get up, you old whore!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Is there anybody there?” shouted Joan.

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

  “Come here, boy,” Joan ordered him.

  The youngster hesitated.

  “Come here ...”

  “What’s going on?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Speak,” was all she said.

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

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

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

  Mar stopped stirring the food in the pot.

  Joan said nothing more.

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

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

  “It wasn’t Arnau who put you there.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Don’t touch me!”

  Joan jumped away from her.

  “Is something wrong, my lady?”

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

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

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

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

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