Cathedral of the Sea (63 page)

“What is going on?” Arnau asked one of the men, grabbing him by the arm as he sped past.

“To the beach!” the man shouted, struggling free of him. “Down to the beach!”

“An attack from the sea?” Arnau and Guillem asked themselves, then joined the hundreds of others running down to the shore.

By the time they arrived, it seemed as though the whole of Barcelona was there, gazing out at the horizon and waving their crossbows in the air. The bells were still ringing loud in their ears. The shouts of “Via fora” gradually subsided, and everyone stood quietly on the sand.

Guillem raised a hand to his eyes to protect them from the fierce June sun, and began to count the ships he could see: one, two, three, four ...

The sea was dead calm.

“They’ll destroy us,” Arnau heard someone say behind him.

“They’ll lay waste to Barcelona.”

“What can we do against an army?”

Twenty-seven, twenty-eight... Guillem was still counting.

“They’ll destroy us,” Arnau said to himself. How often had he discussed this with other merchants and traders? Barcelona was defenseless from the sea. From Santa Clara to Framenors, it was open to the Mediterranean. There were no defenses at all! If a fleet sailed into its port...

“Thirty-nine, forty. Forty ships!” exclaimed Guillem.

Thirty galleys and ten men-o’-war. Pedro the Cruel’s fleet. Forty ships filled with battle-hardened men, up against ordinary citizens suddenly forced to become soldiers. If the ships landed, there would be fighting on the beach and the streets of the city. Arnau shuddered as he thought of all the women and children ... of Mar. Barcelona would be defeated. Then the city would be pillaged, the women raped. Mar! As he thought of what might happen to her, he leaned on Guillem for support. She was young and beautiful. He imagined her being overpowered by Castillian soldiers, screaming, crying for help ... Where would he be?

More and more people crowded onto the beach. The king himself appeared and began to give his men orders.

“The king!” the shout went up.

What could he do? Arnau thought desperately.

The king had been in Barcelona for three months, organizing a fleet to sail and defend Mallorca, which Pedro the Cruel had threatened to attack. But there were only ten of the king’s galleys in port—the rest of the fleet had yet to arrive. And it was in the port that they would do battle!

Arnau shook his head as he surveyed the sails coming closer and closer to the coast. The king of Castille had fooled them. Ever since the war had started three years earlier, there had been a succession of battles and truces. First, Pedro the Cruel had attacked the kingdom of Valencia, and then that of Aragon, where he took the city of Tarazona and directly threatened Zaragoza. At that point, the Church had become involved, and Tarazona was handed over to Cardinal Pedro de la Jugie. It was for him to decide to which of the two kings the city was to belong. A yearlong truce was also signed, although this did not include the frontier regions of the kingdoms of Murcia and Valencia.

During this truce, Pedro the Ceremonious succeeded in persuading his half brother Ferrán, who had been allied with Castille, to change sides and attack Murcia. He did so, and reached as far as Cartagena in the south.

Now King Pedro was on the beach, taking command. He ordered the ten galleys to be made ready, and that the citizens of Barcelona and surrounding towns, who were beginning to arrive at the shore, should embark together with the small number of soldiers he had with him. Every vessel, big or small, was to head out to repel the Castillian fleet.

“This is madness,” complained Guillem when he saw everyone scrambling on board the boats. “Any one of those galleys can ram our vessels and split them in two. Lots of people will be killed.”

It would still take some time before the Castillian fleet reached the harbor.

“They will show no mercy,” Arnau heard someone say. “They’ll massacre us.”

Pedro the Cruel was not someone to show mercy. Everyone was aware of his fearsome reputation: he had executed his bastard brothers, Federico in Seville and Juan in Bilbao. A year later, after holding her prisoner all that time, he had beheaded his aunt Eleonor. What mercy could they expect from someone who did not shrink from killing his own family? The Catalan king had not put Jaime of Mallorca to death despite his constant betrayal and all the wars they had fought.

“It would make more sense to try to defend ourselves on land,” Guillem shouted in Arnau’s ear. “We’ll never do it at sea. As soon as the Castillians get beyond the
tasques,
they will overrun us.”

Arnau agreed. Why was the king so determined to defend the city at sea? Guillem was surely right; once the enemy had got beyond the
tasques
...

“The
tasques
!” Arnau shouted. “What boat do we have in the harbor?”

“What do you mean?”

“The
tasques,
Guillem! Don’t you understand? What ship do we have?”

“That carrack over there,” said Guillem, pointing to a huge, potbellied cargo boat.

“Come on. We’ve no time to lose.”

Arnau started running toward the sea, in among the crowd of other people doing the same. He looked behind to encourage Guillem to follow him.

The shoreline was buzzing with soldiers and citizens of Barcelona, wading into the sea up to their waists. Some of them were trying to clamber on board the small fishing boats that were already heading out to sea; others were waiting for boatmen to come and pick them up and take them to one or other of the bigger men-o’-war or merchant vessels anchored farther out.

Arnau saw a boat approaching the shore.

“Come on!” he shouted to Guillem and plunged into the water, trying to make sure he reached the boat before all the others around them. By the time they got there, it was already full, but the boatman recognized Arnau and made room for him and Guillem.

“Take me out to the carrack over there,” Arnau shouted when the man was about to set sail.

“First to the galleys. That’s the king’s order ...”

“Take me to my ship!” Arnau insisted. The boatman looked at him doubtfully, and the others in the boat started to protest. “Silence!” shouted Arnau. “You all know me. I have to reach my ship. Barcelona ... your family depends on it. All your families might depend on it.”

The boatman gazed out at the big, lumbering ship. It was only a little out of his way. Why would Arnau Estanyol not be telling the truth?

“Head for the carrack!” he ordered his two oarsmen.

As soon as Arnau and Guillem had grasped the rope ladders thrown to them by the ship’s captain, the boatman headed off for the nearest galley.

“Get all your men rowing!” Arnau ordered the captain before his feet had even touched deck.

The captain gave the order to the oarsmen, who immediately took their places on the rowing benches.

“Where are we headed?” he asked.

“To the
tasques
,” Arnau told him.

Guillem nodded. “May Allah, whose name be praised, grant you success.”

But if Guillem understood what Arnau was trying to do, the same could not be said of the king’s army and the citizens of Barcelona. When they saw his ship begin to move off with no soldiers or weapons on board, one of them shouted: “He wants to save his ship!”

“Jew!” another man cried.

“Traitor!”

Many others joined in the insults. Soon, the entire beach was filled with angry cries against Arnau. What was Arnau Estanyol up to?
Bastaixos
and boatmen wondered, as they watched the heavy ship slowly gather speed when a hundred pairs of oars dipped rhythmically into the water.

Arnau and Guillem stood at the ship’s prow, staring at the Castillian fleet that was drawing dangerously close. As they passed the rest of the Catalan fleet, they had to protect themselves from a hail of arrows, but as soon as they were out of range they went to the prow once more.

“This has to work,” Arnau told Guillem. “Barcelona must not fall into the hands of that traitor.”

The tasques were a chain of sandbanks parallel to the coast. They were Barcelona’s only natural defense, although they also represented a danger for any boat wishing to enter the city harbor. There was only one channel that was deep enough to allow large ships in; anywhere else could mean they ran aground on the sands.

Arnau and Guillem drew ever nearer to the
tasques,
no longer having to hear the obscene insults of thousands of voices on the beach. Their shouting had even managed to drown out the noise of the bells.

“It will work,” Arnau repeated, this time under his breath. Then he told the captain to have the oarsmen stop rowing. As the hundred oars were raised out of the water and the ship started to glide toward the
tasques,
the shouts from the beach gradually died away until there was complete silence. The Castillian fleet was drawing closer. Above the sound of the distant bells, Arnau could hear the ship’s keel scraping over sand.

“It has to work!” he muttered.

Guillem seized him by the arm and squeezed it tightly. It was the first time he had ever reacted like this.

The ship glided slowly on and on. Arnau glanced at the captain. “Are we in the channel?” he asked merely by raising his eyebrows. The captain nodded: ever since Arnau had told him to stop rowing, the captain had realized what he was trying to do.

The whole of Barcelona realized.

“Now!” shouted Arnau. “Turn the ship!”

The captain gave the order. The oarsmen on the larboard side plunged their oars into the water, and the carrack began to swing round until prow and stern were stuck firmly in the two sides of the deep channel.

The ship listed to one side.

Guillem squeezed Arnau’s arm even harder. The two men looked at each other and Arnau drew the Moor close to embrace him, while the beach and the king’s galleys exploded with cries of congratulation.

The entrance to the port of Barcelona had been sealed.

In full battle armor on the beach, the king watched as Arnau deliberately ran his ship aground. The nobles and knights grouped around the king said nothing as he stared out to sea.

“To the galleys!” he ordered.

WITH ARNAU’S CARRACK blocking the harbor, Pedro the Cruel deployed his fleet in the open sea. King Pedro the Third did the same on the port side of the sandbanks, and so before nightfall the two fleets—one a proper armada, made up of forty armed and prepared warships, the other a picturesque motley of craft, with ten galleys and dozens of small merchant ships and fishing boats crammed with ordinary citizens—were drawn up facing one another in a line that ran from Santa Clara to Framenors. No one could either enter or leave the port of Barcelona.

There was no battle that day. Five of Pedro the Third’s galleys took up position close to Arnau’s ship, and that night, by the light of a glorious moon, a company of royal soldiers came aboard.

“It seems as though we’re at the center of the battle,” Guillem commented to Arnau as the two men sat on deck, close to the side in order to shelter themselves from any Castillian crossbowmen.

“We’ve become the city wall, and all battles start with the walls.”

At that moment, one of the king’s captains came up.

“Arnau Estanyol?” he asked. Arnau raised a hand. “The king authorizes you to leave the ship.”

“What about my crew?”

“The galley slaves?” Even in the darkness, Arnau and Guillem could see the look of surprise on the officer’s face. What did the king care about a hundred convicts? “We might need them here,” he said, to avoid the question.

“In that case,” said Arnau, “I’m staying. This is my ship, and they are my crew.”

At that the officer shrugged and went on deploying his men.

“Do you want to leave?” Arnau asked Guillem.

“Aren’t I part of your crew?”

“No, as you know very well.” The two men fell silent, watching shadows passing by them as the soldiers ran to take up their positions in response to their officers’ half-whispered commands. “You know you haven’t been a slave for many years now,” added Arnau. “All you have to do is ask for your letter of emancipation and it’s yours.”

Some of the soldiers came to take up position next to them.

“You should go down to the hold with the others,” one of the soldiers muttered as he pushed in beside them.

“In this ship we go where we please,” Arnau replied.

The soldier bent over the two men. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We are all grateful for what you’ve done.”

Then he went off to search for another place by the gunwale.

“When will you want to be free?” Arnau asked Guillem again.

“I don’t think I would know how to be free.”

At this, the two men fell silent. Once all the king’s soldiers had boarded the ship and taken up their positions, the night went slowly by. Arnau and Guillem slept fitfully while the others coughed or snored around them.