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10
“WHY DO THEY keep building the scaffolding
higher and higher?”
Arnau pointed to the rear of Santa Maria church.
Angel looked up and, his mouth full of bread and cheese, muttered
an explanation neither of them could understand. Joanet burst out
laughing, Arnau joined in, and in the end Angel himself could not
avoid chuckling along with them, until he choked and the laughter
turned into a coughing fit.
Arnau and Joanet went to Santa Maria every day.
They entered the church and kneeled down. Urged on by his mother,
Joanet had decided to learn to pray, and he repeated the phrases
Arnau had taught him over and over again. Then, when the two of
them split up, he would race to his mother’s window and tell her
all he had prayed that day. Arnau talked to his mother, except when
Father Albert (they had found out that was his name) appeared, in
which case he joined Joanet in murmuring his devotions.
Whenever they left the church, they would stand
some distance away and survey the carpenters, stonemasons, and
masons at work on the new building. Afterward they would sit in the
square waiting for Angel to have a break and join them to eat his
bread and cheese. Father Albert treated them affectionately; the
men working on Santa Maria always smiled at them; even the
bastaixos, who came by bent under the weight of their
stones, would glance over at the two little boys sitting next to
the church.
“Why do they keep building the scaffolding higher?”
Arnau asked a second time.
The three of them peered at the rear of the church,
where the ten columns stood: eight of them in a semicircle and two
more farther back. Beyond them, workmen had started to build the
buttresses and walls that would form the new apse. The columns rose
higher than the small Romanesque building, but the scaffolding went
on up still farther into the sky. It was not surrounding anything,
as though the workmen had gone crazy and were trying to make a
stairway to heaven.
“I’ve no idea,” Angel admitted.
“None of that scaffolding is supporting
anything.”
“No, but it will,” they suddenly heard a man’s firm
voice say.
The three of them turned round. They had been so
busy laughing and coughing they had not noticed that several men
had gathered behind them. Some of them were dressed in fine
clothes; others wore priests’ vestments, enriched with bejeweled
gold crosses on their chests, big rings, and belts threaded with
gold and silver.
Father Albert was watching from the church door. He
came hurrying over to greet the newcomers. Angel leapt up, and
choked once more on his bread. This was not the first time he had
seen the man who had spoken to them, but he had rarely seen him in
such splendid company. He was Berenguer de Montagut, the person in
charge of the building work on Santa Maria de la Mar.
Arnau and Joanet also stood up. Father Albert
joined the group, and bent to kiss the bishops’ rings.
“What will they support?”
Joanet’s question caught Father Albert just as he
was stooping to kiss another ring: “Don’t speak until you’re spoken
to,” his eyes implored him. One of the provosts made as though to
continue on toward the church, but Berenguer de Montagut grasped
Joanet by the shoulder and leaned down to talk to him.
“Children are often able to see things we miss,” he
said out loud to his companions. “So I would not be surprised if
these three have noticed something that has escaped our attention.
So you want to know why we’re building this scaffolding, do you?”
Glancing toward Father Albert for permission, Joanet nodded. “Do
you see the tops of those columns? Well, from the top of each of
them we are going to build six arches. The most important one of
all will be the one that takes the weight of the new church’s
apse.”
“What is an apse?” asked Arnau.
Berenguer smiled and looked round. Some of the
group with him seemed as anxious to hear his explanation as the
boys were.
“An apse is something like this.” The master
builder joined his hands together in an arch. The children were
fascinated by his magic hands, and others in the group crowded
forward to see. “Well, on top of all the rest,” he said, separating
one hand and pointing to the tip of the other first finger, “we put
a big stone called the keystone. To do that we first have to raise
it to the very highest scaffolding—right up there, can you see?”
They all peered up at the sky. “Once that is in place, we’ll build
the rib vaults of these arches until they meet the keystone. And
that is why we need such tall scaffolding.”
“Why are you doing all that?” Arnau wanted to know.
Poor Father Albert gave a start, although by now he was growing
used to the boys’ questions and comments. “None of this will be
visible from inside the church, because it’s all above the
roof.”
Berenguer and a few of the others laughed. Father
Albert sighed.
“Of course it will be visible, my boy, because the
roof of the present church will gradually disappear as we build the
new structure. It will be as though this tiny church were giving
birth to another, bigger one.”
Joanet’s obvious disappointment unsettled him. The
boy had become accustomed to the small church’s sense of intimacy,
to its smell, its darkness, the atmosphere there when he
prayed.
“Do you love the Virgin of the Sea?” Berenguer
asked him.
Joanet glanced at Arnau. They both nodded.
“Well, when we have finished her new church, the
Virgin you love so much will have more light than any other Virgin
in the world. She will no longer be in darkness as she is now.
She’ll have the most beautiful church you could ever imagine. She
won’t be shut in by thick, low walls, but will shine among tall,
delicate ones, with slender columns and apses that reach up to the
heavens: the perfect place for the Virgin.”
They all looked up at the sky.
“Yes,” Berenguer de Montagut went on, “the Virgin
of the Sea’s new church will reach right up there.”
He and his companions set off toward Santa Maria,
leaving Father Albert and the boys behind.
“Father,” Arnau asked when the others were out of
earshot, “what will happen to the Virgin when they take down the
old building, but haven’t finished her new church yet?”
“Do you see those buttresses?” the priest replied,
pointing to two of the ones being built as the back part of the
ambulatory, behind the main altar. “In between them they are going
to construct the first chapel, dedicated to the Lord Jesus. That’s
where they will put the Virgin, together with the body of Christ
and the sepulcher containing Saint Eulàlia’s remains. That way she
will come to no harm.”
“Who will look after her?”
“Don’t worry,” said the priest with a smile. “The
Virgin will be well looked after. The Jesus chapel belongs to the
bastaix guild; they are the ones who will have the key to
its railings, and will make sure she is looked after.”
Arnau and Joanet knew the bastaixos well by
now. Angel had reeled off their names when a line of them appeared,
bowed beneath their enormous stones: Ramon, the first one they had
met; Guillem, as hard as the rocks he carried on his back, tanned
by the sun and with a face horribly disfigured by an accident, but
gentle and affectionate in his dealings with them; another Ramon,
known as “Little Ramon” because he was smaller and stockier than
the other one; Miquel, a scrawny man who did not look strong enough
to carry the huge weights, but who succeeded in doing so by
straining all the nerves and tendons in his body until it seemed
they might explode; Sebastìa, the least friendly or talkative of
the group, with his son Bastianet. Then there were Pere, Jaume, and
a seemingly endless list of others, all of them men from La Ribera
who had committed themselves to carrying the thousands of stones
needed for the new church from the royal quarry at La Roca to Santa
Maria de la Mar.
Arnau thought of the bastaixos, and the way
they gazed at the church as they arrived bent double under the
weight of a stone; the way they smiled when they were relieved of
their load; the mighty strength of their backs. He was sure they
would look after the Virgin.
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THE OPERATION BERENGUER de Montagut had
told them about took place within the next week.
“Come at first light tomorrow,” Angel had told
them. “That’s when we’ll put the keystone in place.”
The two boys made sure they were there. They ran
toward the workmen who had gathered at the foot of the scaffolding.
Between laborers, bastaixos, and priests, there must have
been more than a hundred people present. Even Father Albert had
taken off his robe and was dressed like all the rest, with a thick
piece of red cloth tied round his waist.
Arnau and Joanet joined the throng, saying hello to
some and waving at others.
“Boys,” they heard one of the masons say, “when we
start to raise the keystone, I want you to stay well away from
here.”
The two boys nodded in agreement.
“Where is the stone?” Joanet asked, looking up at
the builder.
They ran over to where he pointed, at the foot of
the first and lowest scaffold.
“Good heavens!” they both exclaimed when they saw
the huge circular stone on the ground.
Many of the men stared at it as admiringly as they
did, but said nothing. They knew how important this day was.
“It weighs more than six tons,” one of them
said.
With eyes like saucers, Joaner looked inquiringly
at Ramon, the first man they had seen carrying a block of
stone.
“No,” he said, reading the boy’s mind. “We didn’t
carry this one here.”
There was nervous laughter at his comment, but it
soon died away. Arnau and Joanet watched the men file past, looking
alternately at the stone and at the top of the scaffolding: they
had to raise more than six tons some thirty yards in the air, by
pulling on cables!
“If anything goes wrong ... ,” the boys heard one
of the men say as he crossed himself.
“We’ll be caught underneath,” another man replied,
twisting his lips.
No one was standing still. Even Father Albert, in
his strange attire, kept moving among them, encouraging them,
slapping them on the back, ralking animatedly. The old church stood
there in the midst of all the people and the mass of scaffolding.
Curious onlookers from the city began to gather at a safe
distance.
Finally, Berenguer de Montagut appeared. He gave
nobody time to stop and greet him, but leapt onto the lowest level
of scaffolding and began to address all those present. As he did
so, some masons tied a huge pulley round the stone.
“As you can see,” he shouted, “we have rigged up
tackle at the top of the scaffolding so that we can raise the
keystone. The pulleys up there and the ones round the stone are
made up of three separate sets, each of which has another three
coming off them. As you know, we cannot use capstans or wheels,
because we need to move the stone sideways as well. There are three
cables to each pulley system. They go all the way up to the top,
and back down again.” He pointed out the path of the cables; a
hundred heads followed his gesture. “I want you to form three
groups around me.”
The masons began to divide the men. Arnau and
Joanet ran to the rear of the old church and stood with their backs
to the wall, watching the preparations. When Berenguer saw that the
three groups had formed, he went on:
“Each group will haul on one of the cables. You,”
he said, addressing one of the groups, “are to be Santa Maria.
Repeat after me: Santa Maria!”
The men all shouted: “Santa Maria!”
“You are Santa Clara.” The second group called out
the name of Santa Clara. “And you over there are Santa Eulàlia.
I’ll call you by those names. When I shout, ‘Everyone!’ I mean all
three groups. When you are in position, you have to pull in a
straight line, and keep your eyes on the back of the man in front
of you. Listen for the instructions from the mason in charge of
each group. And remember: always pull in a straight line! Now line
up.”
The mason leading each group made sure they were in
line. The cables were made ready, and the men picked them up.
Before the boys could start wondering what was going to happen,
Berenguer shouted again:
“Everyone! When I give the word, start to
pull—gently at first, until you can feel the cables grow taut.
Now!”
Arnau and Joanet watched the three lines pull until
the cables were taut.
“Everyone! Pull hard!”
The boys held their breath. The men dug their heels
into the ground and started to pull. Their arms, backs, and faces
tensed. Arnau and Joanet stared at the huge block of stone. It had
not budged.
“Everyone! Pull harder!”
The order rang out round the church. The men’s
faces went purple with effort. The wooden scaffolding started to
creak. The keystone rose a hand’s breadth from the ground. Six
tons!
“More!” shouted Berenguer, his gaze fixed on the
keystone.
Another few inches. The boys had almost forgotten
to breathe.
“Santa Maria! Pull harder! Harder!”
Arnau and Joanet looked toward the Santa Maria
line. Father Albert was among them. He had his eyes shut and was
pulling with all his might.
“That’s right, Santa Maria! That’s right. Now
everyone: pull!”
The wooden scaffolding creaked again. Arnau and
Joanet glanced at it and then at Berenguer de Montagut. He was
staring intently at the stone, which slowly, very slowly, rose into
the air.
“Heave! Come on, everyone. Pull harder!”
When the keystone reached the level of the first
scaffolding, Berenguer ordered the groups to stop pulling, and to
keep the stone in the air.
“Santa Maria and Santa Eulàlia, stop pulling,” he
ordered. “Santa Clara, you pull!” The stone moved sideways until it
reached the platform Berenguer was standing on. “Now, everyone!
Slacken off the ropes little by little.”
Everyone, including all those hauling on the ropes,
held his breath as the stone came to rest on the wooden structure,
close to Berenguer’s feet.
“Slowly!” he cried out.
The platform buckled under the weight of the
stone.
“What if it gives way?” Arnau whispered to
Joanet.
If it gave way, Berenguer ...
It did not give way. But the scaffold had not been
built to withstand such a weight for any length of time. The
keystone had to be hauled to the top, where Berenguer had
calculated that the platforms were more resistant. The workmen
changed the cables onto the next set of pulleys, and the men
started to haul on them again. The next platform, then the one
after that; six tons of stone rose to the spot where the vaulted
arches were to come together, high in the heavens above all their
heads.
The men were sweating; their muscles had seized up.
From time to time, one of them collapsed, and the builder in charge
of that line ran to pull him out from under the feet of the man in
front. Some strong-looking men from the city were among the crowd,
and whenever a man dropped out, they took over.
Berenguer continued to shout orders from high up on
the scaffolding. Another man lower down made sure all the groups
heard him. When the keystone finally reached the topmost platform,
a few smiles appeared on tightly drawn lips, but they all knew that
the most crucial moment had arrived. Berenguer de Montagut had
calculated the exact position where the keystone had to be placed
so that the vaults of the arches would fit perfectly around it. For
days he had used ropes and stakes to calculate the precise spot in
between the ten columns. He had dropped plumb lines from the
scaffolding and tied ropes from the stakes on the ground up to the
top. He had spent hour after hour scribbling on parchment, then
scratching out the figures and writing over them. If the keystone
was not placed exactly right, it would not support the stress from
the arches, and the whole apse could come crashing down.
In the end, following thousands of calculations and
even more sketches, he traced the outline of where the keystone
should go on the top platform of the scaffolding. That was the
exact spot, not an inch to one side or the other. When they had
hauled the keystone right to the top, the men below almost
despaired when Berenguer refused to allow them to rest it on the
platform as they had done lower down, but went on shouting
orders:
“A little more, Santa Maria. No. Santa Clara, pull,
now hold it there. Santa Eulàlia! Santa Clara! Santa Maria ... !
Lower! Higher! Now!” he suddenly shouted. “Everyone hold it there.
A little lower! Little by little. Gently does it!”
All at once, there was no more weight on the
cables. The men peered silently up at the sky, where Berenguer de
Montagut was kneeling to inspect the positioning of the keystone.
He walked round its two-yard diameter, stood up, and waved in
triumph to everybody down below.
Arnau and Joanet could feel the shouts of joy that
rose from the throats of men who had been toiling for hours: they
reverberated against the church wall behind them. Many of them sank
thankfully to the ground. A few others hugged one another and
danced. The hundreds of spectators who had been watching shouted
and applauded. Arnau could feel a knot in his throat, and all the
hairs on his body stood on end.
“I wish I were older,” he whispered to his father
that night as the two of them lay on the straw pallet surrounded by
the coughs and snores of the slaves and apprentices.
Bernat tried to fathom what was behind his son’s
wish. Arnau had returned home in high spirits, and had told him a
thousand times how the keystone of the Santa Maria apse had been
raised. Even Jaume had listened closely to him.
“Why, son?”
“Because everybody does something. There are lots
of boys who help their fathers at Santa Maria, but Joanet and I
...”
Bernat put his arm round his son’s shoulders and
drew him toward him. It was true that except when his father had
some special errand for him, Arnau spent the whole day at the
church. What could he usefully do there?
“You like the bastaixos, don’t you?”
Bernat had felt his son’s enthusiasm whenever he
spoke about these men who carried the blocks of stone to the new
church. The boys followed them as far as the gates of the city,
waited there for them, then walked back with them, all along the
beach from Framenors to Santa Maria.
“Yes,” Arnau said. His father rummaged for
something under the pallet.
“Here, take this,” Bernat said, giving him the old
waterskin he had taken with them when they first fled his lands.
Arnau felt for it in the darkness. “Offer them fresh water. You’ll
see how they thank you for it.”
As always, at dawn the next day Joanet was waiting
for him at the gates of Grau’s workshop. Arnau showed him the skin,
then hung it round his neck, and they both ran off down to the
beach. They made for the angel fountain, the only one that was on
the bastaixos route. The next fountain was down in Santa
Maria itself.
When the boys spotted the line of bastaixos
coming slowly toward them, bent under the weight of their stones,
they clambered onto one of the boats on the beach. As the first
bastaix came level with them, Arnau showed him the
waterskin. The man smiled and came to a halt next to the boat so
that Arnau could pour the water directly into his mouth. The others
waited until the first man had finished; then the next one stepped
up. Lightened of their load, on their way back to the royal quarry
they paused at the boat to thank the boys for the fresh
water.
From that day on, Arnau and Joanet became the water
carriers for all the bastaixos. They waited for them close
to the angel fountain, or, whenever the laborers had to unload a
ship and could not work for Santa Maria, followed them, around the
city to pour them water without their having to drop the heavy
loads they were carrying.
The two boys still found time to go down to Santa
Maria to watch the building work, talk to Father Albert, or sit and
watch how Angel wolfed down his food. Anyone observing them could
see how their eyes shone in a different way whenever they looked at
the church. They were doing their bit to help build it! That was
what the bastaixos and even Father Albert had told
them.
The keystone hung high in the sky, and the boys saw
how the ribs from each of the ten columns were gradually rising to
meet it. The masons built trusses and then placed one block after
another on them, curving upward. Behind the columns, surrounding
the first eight of them, the walls of the ambulatory had already
been built, with the interior buttresses in place. “Between these
two,” Father Albert told them as he pointed out two of the stone
columns, “we will put the Jesus chapel, the one belonging to the
bastaixos, where the Virgin will stand.”
He said this because as the walls of the ambulatory
were being built, and the new vaults were constructed on the struts
from the columns, the old church was gradually being
demolished.
“Then above the apse,” Father Albert went on, with
Angel nodding at his side, “we’ll build the roof. Do you know what
we will use?” The two boys shook their heads. “All the faulty
pottery jars in the city. First will come the ashlar filling, and
then on top of that all the jars, lined up next to one another.
Finally there will be the roof covering.”
Arnau had seen all the broken jars piled next to
the blocks of stone outside Santa Maria. He had asked his father
why they were there, but Bernat did not know the answer.
“All I know,” he had said, “is that we have to pile
up all the faulty pieces until someone comes and collects
them.”
In this way, the new church began to take shape
behind the apse of the old one, which they carefully dismantled in
order to be able to use its stones. The La Ribera district did not
want to be left without a church, even while the new, magnificent
shrine to the Virgin was rising around them. Masses were said as
usual, and yet there was a strange atmosphere in the church. Like
everyone else, Arnau went in through the lopsided doorway of the
tiny Romanesque construction, but once inside, instead of the
welcoming gloom that had protected him while he talked to the
Virgin, there was now a flood of light from the windows in the new
apse. The old church was like a small box contained within another
much larger and more beautiful one, a box destined to disappear as
the other one grew, a box whose fourth side was taken up by the
new, soaring apse that already boasted a roof.