The noise of the soldiers running and shouting as they chased Arnau still filled the square, but all Joan could hear was the burning crackle of Bernat’s body above him.

The captain of the guard had stayed near the scaffold. He shook Joan and asked again: “Do you know who it was?”

Joan was transfixed by the sight of the man who had been a father to him burning like a torch.

The captain shook Joan until he turned toward him. He was still staring blindly ahead of him, and his teeth were chattering.

“Who was it? Why did he burn your father?”

Joan did not even hear the question. His whole body started to shake.

“He can’t speak,” said the woman who had urged Arnau to run off. It was she who had pulled Joan away from the flames, and had recognized Arnau as the boy who had been sitting guard over the hanged man all that afternoon. “If I only dared do the same,” she thought, “my husband’s body wouldn’t be left to rot on the walls, to be pecked at by the birds.” Yes, that lad had done something all the relatives there wished they had done, and the captain ... he had come on duty only that night, so he could not have recognized Arnau: he thought the man’s son must be this one. The woman put her arms round Joan and hugged him tight.

“I need to know who set fire to him,” the captain insisted.

“What does it matter?” the woman murmured, feeling Joan trembling uncontrollably in her embrace. “This boy is half-dead with fear and hunger.”

The captain rolled his eyes, then slowly nodded. Hunger! He himself had lost an infant child: the boy had grown thinner and thinner until a simple fever had been enough to carry him off. His wife used to hold him just as this woman was doing now. He used to stare at the two of them: his wife in tears, the little boy pressing up against her, desperate for warmth...

“Take him home,” the captain told her.

“Hunger,” he muttered, turning to look at Bernat’s burning corpse, “Those cursed Genoese!”

“Joan!” shouted Arnau as soon as he opened the door.

Pere and Mariona, sitting close to the hearth, motioned to him to be quiet.

“He’s asleep,” said Mariona.

The woman in the square had brought him home and told them what had happened. The two old folks cosseted him until he fell asleep, then went to sit by the fireside.

“What will become of them?” Mariona asked her husband. “Without Bernat, the boy will never survive in the stables.”

“And we won’t be able to feed them,” thought Pere. They could not afford to let them keep the room without paying, or to feed them every day. It was then that he noticed how Arnau’s eyes were shining. His father had just been executed! His body had been burned—so why was he looking so excited?

“I’m a bastaix!” Arnau announced, heading for the few cold scraps left in the pot from the previous evening.

The two old folks looked at each other, and then at the boy, who was eating directly from the ladle, his back to them. He was starving! The lack of grain had affected him, as it had all Barcelona. How was such a puny boy going to be able to carry those heavy loads?

Mariona looked across at her husband, shaking her head.

“God will find a way,” Pere said.

“What did you say?” asked Arnau, turning to face them, his mouth full of food.

“Nothing, my lad, nothing.”

“I have to go,” said Arnau, picking up a piece of stale bread and biting off a chunk. His wish to tell them all that had happened in the square was outweighed by his desire to join his new companions. He said: “When Joan wakes up, tell him where I’ve gone.”

Before he joined the group of bastaixos waiting on the shore, Arnau stared out to sea. It had always been there, but when he had been with his father they had turned their backs on it after a few steps. Today he looked at it with different eyes: it was going to be his livelihood. The port was filled with countless small craft, two big ships that had just arrived, and a fleet of six enormous men-o’-war, with 260 small boats and twenty-six rows of oarsmen each.

Arnau had heard of this fleet; it was Barcelona itself that had paid for it to help King Alfonso in his war against Genoa, and the city’s fourth councillor, Galcera Marquet, was in command. Only victory over Genoa could open the trade routes again and guarantee the Catalan capital’s prosperity: that was why the city had shown the king such generosity.

“You won’t let us down, will you, lad?” someone said as he stood on the shore. Arnau turned and saw it was one of the guild aldermen. “Come on,” the man said, hurrying on to where the other guild members had congregated.

Arnau followed him. When they reached the group, all the bastaixos smiled at him.

“This isn’t like giving people water,” one of them said. The others laughed.

“Here,” said Ramon. “It’s the smallest we could find in the guild.”

Arnau took the headpiece carefully.

“Don’t worry. It won’t snap!” laughed one of the bastaixos when he saw how gently Arnau was holding it.

“Of course not!” thought Arnau, smiling back at him. “How could it?”

Ramon made sure the support was in the right place.

“Good,” he said, patting Arnau on the back. “All you need is the callus.”

“What callus?” Arnau started to ask, but just at that moment the arrival of the guild aldermen drew everyone’s attention.

“They can’t agree,” one of the aldermen explained. All the bastaixos, including Arnau, looked a little farther down the beach, where a group of finely dressed men were arguing. “Galcera Marquet wants his war galleys to be loaded first, but the merchants want their two ships unloaded beforehand. So we have to wait.”

The men muttered among themselves; many of them sat down on the sand. Arnau sat next to Ramon, the leather strap still on his forehead.

“It won’t break, Arnau,” the bastaix said, pointing to it, “but don’t get any sand in it; that would hurt when you lift your load.”

The boy took off the headpiece and put it away carefully, making sure no sand got in it.

“What’s the problem?” he asked Ramon. “We can unload or load first one lot, then the other.”

“Nobody wants to be in Barcelona longer than necessary. If a storm blew up, all the boats would be in peril, defenseless.”

Arnau surveyed the port, from Puig de les Falsies round to Santa Clara, then turned his gaze on the group of men who were still arguing.

“The city councillor is in charge, isn’t he?”

Ramon laughed and ruffled his hair.

“In Barcelona it’s the merchants who are in charge. They are the ones who have paid for the royal men-o’-war.”

In the end, the dispute was settled with a compromise: the bastaixos would first go and collect the supplies for the royal galleys from the city, while the small boats unloaded the merchant ships. The bastaixos ought to be back before the others had reached the shore with the ships’ goods, which would be left under cover in a suitable place rather than immediately distributed to their owners’ storehouses. The boatmen would take the supplies out to the warships while the bastaixos went back for more, then go on from them to the merchant ships to pick up the goods there. This would be repeated until the process was complete, with the warships loaded and the others empty. After that, the goods would be distributed to their corresponding storehouses, and if there was any time left, the merchant ships would be loaded again.

Once the agreement had been struck, all the men set to work. Different groups of bastaixos headed into Barcelona and the city warehouses, where the supplies for the crews and oarsmen of the galleys were kept. The boatmen headed out to the recently arrived merchant ships and began to unload their cargoes, which could not be taken onshore directly because of the lack of a harbor.

Each boat, catboat, cog, or barge had a crew of three or four men: the boatman and, depending on the guild, slaves or freemen who were paid a wage. The boatmen from the Sant Pere guild, the oldest and richest in the city, used two slaves per boat, as stipulated in their ordinances. Those in the more recent and less wealthy guild of Santa Maria had only paid hands. Whoever was in the crew, the operation to load and unload the cargoes was slow and cautious, even when the sea was calm, because the boatmen were held responsible by the ship owners for any loss or damage to their goods. They could even be sent to jail if they could not pay the compensation demanded.

When the sea grew rough in the port of Barcelona, things became even more complicated, not only for the boatmen but for everyone involved in the sea trade. First because the boatmen could refuse to go out and unload the cargo (which they were not allowed to do in fine weather) unless a special price was agreed upon with the owner. But it was the owners, captains, and even the crews of the ships who were most affected by storms. There were severe penalties if they left their ship before the cargo had been completely taken off; and the owner or his clerk, who were the only ones allowed off the ship, had to return at the first sign of any tempest.

So while the boatmen began to unload the first merchant ship, the bastaixos, divided into groups by their leaders, began to transfer the supplies for the galleys from different storehouses in the city. Arnau was put with Ramon, to whom the alderman gave a meaningful look.

They walked down the shoreline to the doors of the Forment, the city’s grain warehouse. It had been heavily guarded by soldiers since the popular uprising. When they reached it, Arnau tried as much as possible to hide behind Ramon, but the soldiers soon saw there was a young lad among all the robust men.

“What’s this fellow going to carry?” one of them asked, pointing to him and laughing.

When he saw all the soldiers staring at him, Arnau felt his stomach churn, and tried to hide even more behind Ramon, but the bastaix grasped him by his shoulder, put the leather headpiece on his forehead, and answered the soldier in a similarly jocular tone. “It’s time he started work!” he shouted. “He’s fourteen and has to help his family.”

The soldiers nodded and stepped aside. Arnau walked between them, head down. As he entered the warehouse, the smell of grain hit him. The beams of sunlight filtering through the windows picked out the particles of fine dust that soon made Arnau and many other bastaixos cough.

“Before the war against Genoa,” Ramon told him, stretching out his hand in a sweeping gesture as though trying to encompass the entire storehouse, “all this was filled with wheat, but now ...”

Arnau spotted lined up against one another the big earthenware jars that Grau had manufactured.

“Get started!” shouted their leader.

Holding a parchment in his hand, the manager of the warehouse started pointing to the jars. “How on earth are we going to carry such full jars?” Arnau wondered. It was impossible for one man to carry all that weight. But the bastaixos formed pairs, and after tipping the jars slightly to put ropes round them, they threaded a long pole through the ropes, lifted it together, and set off for the beach.

Clouds of dust started to swirl around. Arnau coughed still more. When it was his turn, he heard Ramon shout: “Give the boy one of the small ones, one with salt in it.”

The warehouse manager looked at Arnau and shook his head. “Salt is expensive,” he said, addressing Ramon. “If he drops the jar ...”

“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.

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.”

Arnau looked at him.

“It’s true,” the bastaix insisted with a smile. “You’ll discover that today.”

They started from Santa Clara, at the eastern end of the city, and had to cross the entire city, then out of the walls and up to the royal quarry at La Roca, in Montjuic. Arnau walked without talking: from time to time he could sense that some of the others were watching him. They left La Ribera behind, then the exchange and the Forment storehouse. As they passed by the angel fountain, Arnau could see the women waiting to fill their pitchers; many of them had let him and Joan in when they came running up with the waterskin. People waved as they went by. Some children ran and jumped around the group of men, whispering and pointing at Arnau with respect. The bastaixos left behind the gates of the shipyard and reached the Framenors convent at the western end of the city. It was here that the city walls petered out; beyond them were the unfinished royal dockyards and, farther on still, open countryside and vegetable plots: San Nicolau, San Bertran, and San Pau del Camp. This was where the track up to the quarry began.

Before they could reach it, however, the bastaixos had to cross Cagalell. The stench from the city’s waste hit them long before they could see it.

“They’re draining it,” one of the men said when the smell overwhelmed them.

Most of the others agreed.

“It wouldn’t smell so bad if they weren’t,” another bastaix explained.

Cagalell was a pond that formed at the mouth of the gully by the walls. It was here that all the waste and sewage from the city accumulated. The ground was so rough it could not run off properly across the beach, so the water lay stagnant until a city workman dug a channel through and pushed the waste out into the sea. That was when Cagalell smelled its worst.

They skirted round it until they came to a narrow part they could jump across, then walked on through the fields until they reached the slopes of Montjuic.

“How do we get back across Cagalell?” asked Arnau, pointing to the foul-smelling stream.

“I’ve never yet met anybody who could jump with a block of stone on his back,” laughed Ramon.

As they climbed up to the royal quarry, Arnau peered back down at the city. It looked far, far below. How was he going to walk all that way with a huge stone on his back? He could feel his legs giving way just at the thought of it, but he ran to catch up with the rest of the group, who were still talking and laughing as they climbed ahead of him.

They went round a bend, and there the royal quarry lay in front of them. Arnau could not help gasping in astonishment. It was like Plaza del Blat or any of the other city markets, except that there were no women! On a flat expanse of ground, the king’s officers were dealing with everyone who had come seeking stone. Carts and mule trains were lined up on one side, where the walls of the mountain had not yet been excavated. The rest looked as though it had been sliced through, and was a mass of glistening rock. Countless stonemasons were dangerously levering off huge blocks of stone; down on the flat ground others cut them into smaller stones.

The bastaixos were greeted with great affection by all those waiting for stones. While their leaders talked to the quarry officials, the others embraced or shook hands with the people waiting. They laughed and joked together, and skins of wine or water were raised.

Arnau could not help watching the stonecutters at work. He was equally fascinated by the way the laborers loaded the carts and mules, always supervised by a clerk noting everything down. Just as in the markets, people were talking or waiting their turn impatiently.

“You weren’t expecting anything like this, were you?”

Arnau turned and saw Ramon handing back a wineskin. He shook his head.

“Who is all this stone for?”

“Oh!” said Ramon, then began to reel off the list: “for the cathedral, for Santa Maria del Pi, Santa Anna, for the Pedralbes monastery, for the royal dockyards, for Santa Clara, for the city walls. Everything is being built or changed; and then there are the new houses for the rich and the noblemen. Nobody wants wood or bricks. They all want stone.”

“And the king gives them all this stone?”

Ramon burst out laughing.

“The only stone he gives free is for Santa Maria de la Mar ... and possibly for Pedralbes monastery too, because that is being built at the queen’s behest. He charges a lot for all the rest.”

“Even the stone for the royal dockyards?” asked Arnau. “They are for the king, aren’t they?”

Ramon smiled again.

“They may be royal,” he said, “but the king isn’t the one paying for them.”

“The city?”

“No.”

“The merchants?”

“Not them either.”

“Well, then?” asked Arnau, turning to face him.

“The royal dockyards are being paid for by—”

“The sinners!” the man who had offered him his wineskin took the words out of Ramon’s mouth. He was a mule driver from the cathedral.

Ramon and he laughed out loud at Arnau’s bewildered look.

“The sinners?”

“Yes,” explained Ramon, “the new shipyards are being built thanks to money from sinful merchants. Look, it’s very simple: ever since the Crusades ... You know what the Crusades were, don’t you?” Arnau nodded: of course he knew what they were. “Well, ever since the Holy City was lost forever, the Church has banned all trade with the sultan of Egypt. But as it happens, it’s there that our traders can find their best goods, so none of them is willing to give up trading with the sultan. Which means that whenever they want to do so, they go to the customs office and pay a fine for the sin they are about to commit. They are also absolved beforehand, and therefore they don’t fall into sin. King Alfonso ordered that all the money collected in this way should go to financing Barcelona’s new dockyards.”

Arnau was about to say something, but Ramon raised his hand to cut him short. The guild aldermen were calling them. He signaled to Arnau to follow him.

“Are we going before them?” asked Arnau, pointing to the muleteers they were leaving behind.

“Of course,” said Ramon, still striding ahead. “We don’t need to be checked as thoroughly as they do: our stone is free, and easy to count: one bastaix, one stone.”

“One bastaix, one stone,” Arnau repeated to himself when the first bastaix and the first stone came past him on their way down the mountain. He and Ramon had reached the spot where the stonecutters were cutting the huge blocks. He looked at his companion’s taut, tense face. Arnau smiled, but his fellow bastaix did not respond: the time for jokes and pleasantries was over. Nobody was laughing or talking now; they were all staring at the heap of stones on the ground. They all had the leather thongs fixed tightly round their foreheads; Arnau slipped his over his head. The bastaixos were coming past him now, one by one. They were silent, and did not wait for the next one. The group around the stones was growing smaller all the time. As Arnau stared at the stones, he could feel his stomach wrench. A bastaix bent over, and two laborers lifted a block of stone onto his back. Arnau could see him flinch under the weight. His knees were knocking! The man stood still for a few moments, straightened up, then walked past Arnau on his way down to Santa Maria. My God, he was three times as strong as Arnau, and yet his legs had almost given way! How was he going to...?

“Arnau,” called out the guild aldermen.

There were still a few bastaixos waiting. Ramon pushed him forward.

“You can do it,” he said.

The three aldermen were talking to one of the stonecutters. He kept shaking his head. The four of them were surveying the pile of stones, pointing here and there, and then shaking their heads again. Standing by the pile, Arnau tried to swallow, but his throat was too dry. He was shaking: he had to stop! He moved his hands, then extended his arms backward and forward. He could not allow them to see him trembling!

Josep, one of the aldermen, pointed to a stone. The stonecutter shrugged, glanced at Arnau, shook his head once more, and then waved to the masons to pick it up. “They’re all the same,” he had told the bastaixos over and over.

Seeing the two masons approaching with the stone, Arnau went up to them. He bent over and tensed all the muscles in his body. Everyone fell silent. The masons slowly let go of the block and helped him grasp it with his hands. As the weight pressed down on him, he bent still farther over, and his legs started to buckle. He clenched his teeth and shut his eyes. “You can do it!” he thought he heard. In fact, nobody had said a word, but everyone had said it to themselves when they saw the boy’s legs wobble. “You can do it!” Arnau straightened under the load. A lot of the others gave a sigh of relief. But could he walk? Arnau stood there, his eyes still closed. Could he walk?

He put one foot forward. The weight of the block of stone forced him to push out the other foot, then the first one again ... and the other one a second time. If he stopped ... if he stopped, the stone would crush him.

Ramon took a deep breath and covered his face with his hands.

“You can do it, lad!” one of the waiting muleteers shouted.

“Go on, brave heart.”

“You can do it!”

“For Santa Maria!”

The shouting echoed off the walls of the quarry and accompanied Arnau as he set off on his own down the path to the city.

But he was not alone. All the bastaixos who set off after him soon caught up and made sure that they fell in with him for a few minutes, encouraging him and helping him on his way. As soon as another one reached them, the first would continue at his own pace.

Arnau could hardly hear what they said. He could scarcely even think. All his attention was on the foot that had to come from behind, and once he saw it moving forward and touching the ground under him, he concentrated on the other one; one foot after the other, overcoming the pain.

As he crossed the gardens of San Bertran, his feet seemed to take an eternity to appear. By now, all the other bastaixos had overtaken him. He remembered how when Joan and he used to give them water they would rest the block on the edge of a boat while they drank. Now he looked for something similar, and soon came across an olive tree. He rested the stone on one of its lower branches; he knew that if he left it on the ground, he would never be able to raise it again. His legs were stiff as boards.

“If you stop,” Ramon had advised him, “make sure your legs don’t go completely stiff. If they do, you won’t be able to carry on.”

So Arnau, freed from at least part of the weight, continued to move his legs. He took deep breaths. Once, twice, many times. “The Virgin will take part of the weight,” Ramon had told him. My God! If that was true, how much did his stone really weigh? He did not dare move his back. It hurt terribly. He rested for a good while. Would he be able to set off again? Arnau looked all around him. He was completely alone. Not even the mule drivers took this path, because they had to go down to the Trentaclaus gate.

Could he do it? He stared up into the sky. He listened to the silence, then with one pull managed to lift the block of stone again. His feet began to move. First one, then the other, one, then the other ...

At Cagalell he stopped again, this time resting the stone on the ledge of a huge rock. The first bastaix reappeared, on their way back to the quarry. Nobody spoke, merely exchanging glances. Arnau gritted his teeth once more and lifted the stone again. Some of the bastaixos nodded their approval, but none of them halted. “It’s his challenge,” one of them commented later, when Arnau was out of earshot, and he turned to look at the boy’s painful progress. “He has to do it on his own,” another man agreed.

After he had passed the western wall and left Framenors behind, Arnau came across the first inhabitants of Barcelona. All his attention was still on his feet. He was in the city! Sailors, fishermen, women and children, men from the boatyards, and ships’ carpenters all stared in silence at the boy bent double under the stone, his face sweaty and mottled from the effort. They looked at the feet of this youthful bastaix, and he could see nothing else. Everyone was silently willing him on: one foot, then the other, one after the other ...

Some of them fell in behind him, still without saying a word. After more than two hours’ effort, Arnau finally arrived at Santa Maria accompanied by a small, silent crowd. Work on the church came to a halt. The workmen stood at the edge of the scaffolding. Carpenters and stonemasons put down their tools. Father Albert, Pere, and Mariona were there, waiting for him. Angel, the boatman’s son who by now was a craftsman, came up to him.

“Keep going!” he shouted. “You’re there! You’ve made it! Come on, you can do it!”

Shouts of encouragement came from the highest scaffolding. The crowd that had followed Arnau through the city cheered and applauded. All Santa Maria joined in, even Father Albert. Yet Arnau still stared down at his feet: one, then the other, one, the other ... all the way to the area where the stones were stored. As he reached it, apprentices and craftsmen rushed to receive the block the boy had carried.

Only then did Arnau look up. He was still bent double, and his body was shaking all over. But he smiled. People crowded all round to congratulate him. Arnau found it hard to tell who they all were: the only one he recognized was Father Albert. He was staring in the direction of Las Moreres cemetery. Arnau followed his gaze.

“For you, Father,” he whispered.

When the crowd had dispersed and Arnau was preparing to head back toward the quarry as his companions had done—some of them by now had made as many as three journeys—the priest called out to him. Josep, the guild alderman, had given him instructions.

“I’ve got a job for you,” he said. Arnau came to a halt and looked at him, puzzled. “You have to clean the Jesus chapel, to sort out the candles and tidy everything.”

“But ... ,” Arnau protested, pointing to the blocks of stone.

“There are no buts about it.”