Cathedral of the Sea (73 page)

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 would 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.