Cathedral of the Sea (31 page)

“Give him one with salt!”

The grain jars measured about three feet in height, but the one Arnau had to carry was about half that size. Even so, when Ramon helped him lift it onto his back, he could feel his knees buckle.

Ramon squeezed his shoulders. “It’s time to show your worth,” he whispered.

Bent over, Arnau took a step forward. He grasped the handles of the jar firmly and pushed his head until he could feel the leather thong biting into his forehead.

Ramon watched as he set off unsteadily, putting one foot in front of the other slowly and carefully. The warehouse man shook his head again. The soldiers said nothing as the boy passed by them.

“This is for you, Father!” Arnau muttered between clenched teeth when he felt the heat of the sun on his face. The weight was going to split him in two! “I’m not a child any longer, Father; can you see me?”

Ramon and another
bastaix
walked behind him, carrying a large grain jar on a pole. They watched as Arnau almost fell over his own feet. Ramon shut his eyes.

“Are you still hanging there?” Arnau was thinking, the image of Bernat’s body imprinted on his mind. “Nobody can make fun of you anymore! Not even that witch and her stepchildren!” He steadied himself under the load and set off again.

He reached the shore. Ramon was smiling behind him. Nobody said a word. The boatmen came and relieved him of the salt jar before he reached the sea. It took Arnau several moments before he could straighten up again. “Did you see me, Father?” he muttered, peering at the sky.

When he had unloaded his grain jar, Ramon patted Arnau on the back.

“Another one?” the boy asked in all seriousness.

Two more. When Arnau had deposited the third salt jar on the beach, Josep, one of the guild leaders, came up to him.

“That’s enough for today, my lad,” he told him.

“I can do more,” replied Arnau, trying not to show how much his back was hurting.

“No, you can’t. Besides, I can’t have you going round Barcelona bleeding like a wounded animal,” he said in a fatherly way, pointing to thin trickles of blood running down Arnau’s sides. Arnau put a hand to his back, then glanced at it. “We’re not slaves; we’re freemen, working for ourselves, and that’s how people should see us. Don’t worry,” the alderman said, seeing how disappointed Arnau looked. “The same has happened to all of us at one time or another, and we all had someone who told us to stop working. The blisters you have on your neck and back have to harden, to form a callus. That will only take a few days, and you can be assured that from then on, I won’t let you rest any more than the others.”

Josep handed him a small bottle. “Make sure you clean the wounds properly. Then have some of this ointment rubbed on. It will help dry out the wounds.”

As he listened to the man, Arnau relaxed. He would not have to carry anything more that day, but the pain and the tiredness from the sleepless night he had just experienced left him feeling faint. He muttered a few words of good-bye and dragged himself home. Joan was waiting for him at the door. How long had he been there?

“Did you know I’m a
bastaix
now?” Arnau said when he reached the doorway.

Joan nodded. He knew. He had watched his brother on his last two journeys, clenching teeth and fists as he saw each unsteady step, praying he would not fall, shedding tears at the sight of his blotched purple face. Now Joan wiped away the last of his tears and held out his arms. Arnau fell into his embrace.

“You have to put this ointment on my back,” Arnau managed to say as Joan helped him upstairs.

That was all he did say. A few seconds later, collapsed flat out on the pallet with his arms outstretched, he fell into a deep, restorative sleep. Trying not to wake him, Joan cleaned his wounds with hot water that Mariona brought up to him. The ointment had a strong, sharp smell. He spread it on, and it seemed to take effect immediately, because Arnau stirred but did not wake up.

That night it was Joan who could not sleep. He sat on the floor next to his brother, listening to him breathe. He allowed his own eyelids to droop whenever the sound was regular and quiet, but started awake whenever Arnau moved uncomfortably. “What’s going to become of us now?” he wondered from time to time. He had talked to Pere and his wife; the money Arnau earned as a
bastaix
would not be enough to keep them both. What would happen to him?

“Get to school!” Arnau ordered the next morning, when he saw Joan busy helping Mariona with her household chores. He had thought about it the previous day: everything should stay the same, just as his father had left it.

Mariona was leaning over her fire. She turned to her husband, who spoke before Joan could even answer.

“Obey your elder brother,” he told him.

Mariona’s face creased in a smile. Her husband, though, looked serious: how were the four of them going to live? Mariona went on smiling, until Pere shook his head as if trying to clear it of all the doubts they had talked over endlessly the previous evening.

Joan ran out of the house. As soon as he had gone, Arnau tried to stretch. He could not move a single muscle. They had all seized up, and he felt stiff from head to toe. Bit by bit, however, his young body came back to life, and after eating a frugal breakfast he went out into the sunshine. He smiled when he saw the beach, the sea, and the six galleys still at anchor in the port.

Ramon and Josep made him show them his back.

“One trip,” the guild alderman told Ramon before rejoining the group. “Then he can go to the chapel.”

Arnau turned to look at Ramon as he struggled to replace his shirt.

“You heard him,” Ramon said.

“But...”

“Do as you’re told, Arnau. Josep knows what he is doing.”

He did. As soon as Arnau lifted the first jar onto his back, his wound started bleeding again.

“But if it has started bleeding already,” he said when Ramon unloaded his jar of grain on the beach behind him, “what’s the problem if I make a few more journeys?”

“The callus, Arnau, the hard skin. The idea is not to destroy your back, but to let the hard skin form. Now go and wash, put more ointment on, and get down to our chapel in Santa Maria ...” As Arnau made to protest, Ramon insisted: “It’s our chapel—it’s your chapel, Arnau. We have to look after it.”

“My boy,” said the
bastaix
who had carried the jar with Ramon, “that chapel means a lot to us. We’re nothing more than port workers, but La Ribera has offered us something that no nobleman or wealthy guild has: the Jesus chapel and the keys to the church of Santa Maria de la Mar. Do you understand what that means?” Arnau nodded thoughtfully. “There can be no greater honor for any of us. You’ll have plenty of time to load and unload; don’t worry about that.”

Mariona tended his back, and then Arnau headed for Santa Maria. He went to find Father Albert to get the keys to the chapel, but the priest first took him to the cemetery outside Las Moreres gate.

“This morning I buried your father,” he told him, pointing to the cemetery. Puzzled, Arnau looked at him. “I didn’t want to tell you in case any soldiers appeared. The magistrate decided he did not want people to see your father’s burned body either in Plaza del Blat or above the city gates. He was frightened others might do the same. It wasn’t hard to convince him to let me bury the body.”

They both stood silently outside the cemetery for a while.

“Would you like me to leave you on your own?” the priest eventually asked.

“I have to clean the
bastaixos’
chapel,” said Arnau, wiping away his tears.

For several days after that, Arnau made only one trip carrying a load, then went back to the chapel. The galleys had already weighed anchor, and the goods from the merchant ships were the usual items of trade: fabrics, coral, spices, copper, wax ... Then one day, Arnau’s back did not bleed. Josep inspected it again, and Arnau spent the whole day carrying heavy bundles of cloth, smiling at every
bastaix
he met on the way.

He was also paid his first wage. Barely a few pence more than he had earned working for Grau! He gave it all to Pere, together with a few coins he still had from Bernat’s purse. “It’s not enough,” the boy thought as he counted out the coins. Bernat used to pay Pere a lot more. He peered inside the purse again. That would not last very long, he realized. His hand still inside the purse, he looked at the old man. Pere grimaced.

“When I can carry more,” said Arnau, “I’ll earn more.”

“You know as well as I do that will take time, Arnau. And before that, your father’s purse will be empty. You know this house isn’t mine ... No, it isn’t,” he added, when the boy looked up at him in surprise. “Most of the houses in the city belong to the Church: to the bishop or a religious order. We have them only in emphyteusis, a long lease for which we pay rent every year. You know how little I can work, so I rely on the money from the room to be able to pay. If you can’t cover it... what am I to do?”

“So what’s the point of being free if citizens are chained to their houses just as peasants are to their lands?” asked Arnau, shaking his head.

“We’re not chained to them,” Pere said patiently.

“But I’ve heard that all these houses are passed down from father to son; they even get sold! How is that possible if they don’t belong to you? Are you not tied to them?”

“That’s easy to understand, Arnau. The Church is very rich in lands and properties, but according to its laws it cannot sell ecclesiastical possessions.” Arnau tried to intervene, but Pere raised a hand to stop him. “The problem is that the bishops, abbots, and other important positions in the Church are appointed by the king. He always chooses his friends, and the pope never says no. All those friends of the king hope to receive a good income from what they own, and since they cannot sell any properties, they have invented this system called emphyteusis to get round the ban.”

“So that makes you tenants,” said Arnau, trying to understand.

“No. Tenants can be thrown out at any time. The emphyteuta can never be thrown out ... as long as he pays his rent to the Church.”

“Could you sell the house?”

“Yes. That’s known as subemphyteusis. The bishop would get a part of the proceeds, known as the laudemium, and the new subemphyteuta could carry on just as I do. There is only one caveat.” Arnau looked at him inquisitively. “The house cannot be passed on to anyone of a higher social position. It could never be sold to a nobleman ... although I doubt whether any noble would be interested in this place, don’t you?” he said with a smile. When Arnau did not join in, Pere became serious once more. He said nothing for a while, then added: “The thing is, I have to pay the annual rent, and between what I earn and what you pay me ...”

“What are we going to do now?” Arnau thought. With the miserable wage he earned, he and his brother could not even pay enough for food, and yet it was not fair to cause Pere problems: he had always treated them well.

“Don’t worry,” he said hesitantly. “We’ll leave and then you—”

“Mariona and I have been thinking.” Pere interrupted him. “If you and Joan accept, perhaps you could sleep down here by the fire.” Arnau’s eyes opened wide. “That way ... that way we could rent the room to a family and be able to pay the annual rent. You would only have to find two pallets for yourselves. What do you think?”

Arnau’s face lit up. His lips began to tremble.

“Does that mean yes?” Pere prompted him.

Arnau steadied his mouth and nodded enthusiastically.

“Now IT’S TIME we helped the Virgin!” one of the guild aldermen shouted.

Arnau felt the hairs prickle on his arms and legs.

That day there were no ships to load or unload. The sea in the port was dotted with small fishing boats. The
bastaixos
had gathered on the beach as usual. The sun was climbing in the sky, heralding a fine spring day.

This was the first time since Arnau had become a
bastaix
at the start of the seagoing season that they had been able to spend a day working for Santa Maria.

“We’ll help the Virgin!” the group of
bastaixos
shouted.

Arnau surveyed his companions: their drowsy faces were suddenly all smiles. Some of them swung their arms back and forward to loosen their back muscles. Arnau recalled when he used to give them water, and see them going by, bent double under the weight of the enormous stones. Would he be up to it? Fear tightened his muscles, and he began to exercise like the others.

“This is your first time, isn’t it?” said Ramon, congratulating him. Arnau said nothing, and allowed his arms to drop to his sides. “Don’t worry, my lad,” Ramon added, resting his hand on his shoulder and encouraging him to catch up with the others, who were already leaving the beach. “Remember that when you are carrying stones for the Virgin, she carries part of the weight.”