Cathedral of the Sea (74 page)

“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 other 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...

“God knows this. He knows you. His all-seeing eye is upon you. Anyone who sees sin and does not denounce it will burn in the eternal fires, because it is even worse to tolerate sin than to commit it; he who sins may be forgiven, but he who hides sin ...” Having said this, he would study them closely: an uneasy shuffling here, a furtive glance there. They would be the first. “He who hides sin”—Joan fell silent again, saying nothing until he could see them quaking at his threatening words—“will never be forgiven.”

Fear. Fire, pain, sin, punishment... the black friar shouted and persisted in his diatribe until he controlled their minds; his grip over them began with this first sermon.

“You have a period of grace of three days,” he said finally. “Anyone who comes voluntarily to confess their guilt will be dealt with mercifully. After those three days ... the punishment will be exemplary.” He turned to the captain. “Investigate that blond woman over there, that barefoot man, and the one with the black belt. And that girl with the baby ...” Joan pointed them all out discreetly. “If they do not come forward themselves, you are to bring them to me, together with another three chosen at random.”

THROUGHOUT THE THREE days of grace, Joan remained seated, unmoving, behind the table in his lodging. With him were the scribe and the soldiers, who shifted from foot to foot as the hours slowly went by.

Only four people appeared to relieve their boredom: two men who had not fulfilled their obligation to attend mass, a woman who had disobeyed her husband on several occasions, and a child who poked his head, wide-eyed, around the door.

Someone was pushing him from behind, but the boy refused to enter the room properly and stood in the doorway, half-in and half-out.

“Come in, boy,” Joan urged him.

At this, the boy drew back, but once again a hand pushed him inside the room, then shut the door behind him.

“How old are you?” asked Joan.

The boy stared at the soldiers, at the scribe who had already begun to write, and at the black friar.

“Nine,” he said hesitantly.

“What is your name?”

“Alfons.”

“Come closer, Alfons. What do you want to tell us?”

“That ... that two months ago I picked some beans from our neighbor’s garden.”

“You picked?” asked Joan.

Alfons lowered his gaze.

“I stole,” he said in a faint voice.

JOAN GOT UP from his pallet and trimmed the lantern. The village had been silent for hours, and he had spent all that time trying to get to sleep. Whenever he shut his eyes and felt drowsy, a teardrop falling down Arnau’s cheek would jerk him back awake. He needed light. He tried many times to sleep, but always found himself sitting up on the pallet, sometimes fearful, at others bathed in sweat, always engulfed by memories that haunted him.

He needed light. He checked that there was still oil in the lamp. Arnau’s sad face peered at him out of the shadows.

He fell back on the pallet. It was cold. It was always cold. For a while he lay and watched the flickering flame and the shadows dancing in its light. The only window in the room had no glass, and the wind was whistling through it. “We are all dancing a dance ... Mine is ...”

He curled up under the blankets and forced himself to close his eyes once more.

Where was the light of day? One more morning, and their three days of grace would be up.

Joan fell into an uneasy sleep, but half an hour later he woke up again, in a sweat.

The lantern was still burning, the shadows still dancing. The village was completely quiet. Why did day not dawn?

He wrapped himself in the blankets and went over to the window.

Another village. Another night waiting for day to dawn.

Waiting for the next day...

THAT MORNING A line of villagers stood outside the house, guarded by the soldiers.

She said her name was Peregrina. Joan pretended not to be paying much attention to the blond woman who was fourth in line. He had got nothing out of the first three. Peregrina stood in front of the table where Joan and the scribe were sitting. The fire crackled in the hearth. Nobody else was inside the house: the soldiers were posted outside the front door. All of a sudden, Joan looked up. The woman began to tremble.

“You know something, don’t you, Peregrina? God sees everything,” Joan told her. Peregrina nodded, but did not raise her eyes from the beaten earth floor. “Look at me. I need you to look at me. Do you want to burn in everlasting flames? Look at me. Do you have children?”

Slowly, the woman looked up.

“Yes, but—” she stammered.

“But they are not the sinful ones, is that it?” Joan interrupted her. “Who is then, Peregrina?” The woman hesitated. “Who is it, Peregrina?”

“Blasphemy,” she said.

“Who is committing blasphemy, Peregrina?”

The scribe was poised to write.

“She is ...” Joan waited without saying anything. There was no going back now. “I’ve heard her blaspheme when she is angry ...” Peregrina’s gaze darted back to the floor. “My husband’s sister, Marta. She says terrible things when she is angry.”

The scratch of the scribe’s quill on the parchment drove out all other noises.

“Is there anything more, Peregrina?”

This time the woman raised her eyes and looked at him calmly. “No, nothing more.”

“Are you sure?”

“I swear it. You have to believe me.”

Joan had been mistaken only about the man with the black belt. The barefoot man had denounced two shepherds who did not follow the rules of abstinence: he swore he had seen them eat meat during Lent. The girl with the baby, a young widow, denounced her neighbor. He was a married man who was continually making advances to her ... and had even stroked her breast.

“What about you? Did you allow him to do that?” Joan asked her. “Did you enjoy it?”

The girl burst into tears.

“Did it give you pleasure?” Joan insisted.

“We were hungry,” she sobbed, holding up her baby.

The scribe wrote down her name. Joan stared at her. “What did he give you?” he thought. “A crust of dry bread? Is that all your honor is worth?”

“Confess!” he shouted, pointing a finger at her.

Two more people denounced their neighbors, claiming they were heretics.

“Some nights I hear strange noises and see lights in their house,” one of them said. “They are Devil worshippers.”

“What could your neighbor have done for you to denounce him like this?” wondered Joan to himself. “You know he will never find out who betrayed him. What do you stand to gain if I condemn him? A strip of land perhaps?”

“What is your neighbor’s name?”

“Anton the baker.”

The scribe copied out the name.

By the time Joan had finished the interrogations, night was falling. He called the captain in, and the scribe read out the names of all those who were to present themselves to the Inquisition at first light the next day.

THEN AGAIN IT was the silence of the night, the cold, the flickering flame... and his memories. Joan got up once more.