30
EIXIMÈN D’ESPARCA AND his men caught up
with the royal army near the town of Elna the Proud, barely two
leagues from Perpignan. The king decided to make camp there for the
night. He received the visit of yet another bishop, who once again
tried unsuccessfully to mediate on behalf of Jaime of
Mallorca.
Although King Pedro had not objected to Eiximèn
d’Esparca and his Almogavars taking Bellaguarda castle, he did try
to prevent another group of knights from overrunning the tower of
Nidoleres on the way to Elna. He arrived too late: by the time he
got there, the knights had already taken it, killed all its
inhabitants, and set fire to everything.
Nobody, however, dared go near Elna or threaten the
people living there. The entire royal army gathered round their
campfires and stared at the lights of the town. In open defiance of
the Catalan army, its gates were left wide open.
“Why ... ,” Arnau started to ask, seated at one of
the fires.
“Why is it called Elna the Proud?” one of the
veterans interrupted him.
“Yes ... and why are we showing it so much respect?
Why don’t they even bother to shut the gates?”
The soldier stared at the city for a while long
before answering.
“Elna the Proud weighs on our consciences ... as
Catalans,” he explained. “They know we won’t dare touch them.” With
that, he fell silent. Arnau had learned to respect the experienced
soldiers’ ways. He knew that if he hurried him, the man would look
down on him and refuse to say anything more. All the veterans liked
to take their time telling their stories and reminiscences, whether
they were true or false, had actually happened or not. And they
liked to build up the suspense. In his own good time, the soldier
continued his explanation: “In the war against the French, when
Elna was our possession, Pedro the Great promised to defend it. He
sent a detachment of Catalan knights to do so. But they betrayed
the town, fleeing at night and leaving it at the enemy’s mercy.”
The veteran spat into the fire. “The French profaned the churches,
killed the children by beating their heads against the walls, raped
the women, and executed all the men ... all except one. That’s why
the massacre at Elna is on our consciences. No Catalan would dare
touch the town.”
Arnau looked again at the open gates of Elna the
Proud. Then, as he gazed at the campfires of the Catalan forces, he
could see that men round each of them were also staring down at
Elna in silence.
“Whose life did they spare?” he asked, breaking his
own rules about not being impatient.
The veteran studied him through the flames.
“A man called Bastard de Rosselló.” This time,
Arnau waited for him to go on. “Years later, that same man guided
the French troops through the La Macana pass to invade
Catalonia.”
THE ARMY SLEPT in the shadow of the town of
Elna.
A short way from them, the camp of hundreds of
followers also slept. Francesca gazed at Aledis. Was this the right
place? Elna’s history had been told in this camp too, and an
unusual silence reigned. Francesca had found herself looking time
and again at the town’s open gates. Yes, they were in inhospitable
territory; no Catalan would ever be well received in Elna or the
surrounding area. Aledis was a long way from home. All it needed
was for her to feel she was completely alone.
“Your Arnau is dead,” Francesca told her
straightaway after she had sent for her.
Aledis crumpled before her eyes: Francesca could
see her visibly shrink inside her green robe. Aledis raised her
hands to her face, and the strange silence was broken by the sound
of her sobbing.
“How ... how did it happen?” she asked after a
while.
“You lied to me,” was all Francesca said
coldly.
Shaking and with eyes brimming with tears, Aledis
gazed at the older woman and then looked down.
“You lied to me,” Francesca repeated. Aledis said
nothing. “You want to know how it happened? Your husband—the real
one—the tanner, killed him.”
Pau? That was impossible. Aledis looked up. It was
impossible that an old man like him ...
“He turned up at the royal camp and accused Arnau
of abducting you,” Francesca went on, disturbing Aledis’s thoughts.
She wanted to observe her reactions, especially as Arnau had told
her she was afraid of her husband. “He denied it, and your husband
challenged him.” Aledis tried to interrupt—how could Pau challenge
anyone? “He paid a captain to fight on his behalf,” Francesca
insisted, forcing Aledis to remain quiet. “Didn’t you know? When
someone is too old to fight, he can pay somebody else to do it for
him. Your Arnau died defending your honor.”
Aledis grew desperate. Francesca could see her
whole body quake. Her legs gradually gave way, and she sank to her
knees on the ground in front of the older woman. Francesca was
ruthless.
“I’ve heard that your husband is looking for
you.”
Aledis covered her face with her hands again.
“You’ll have to leave us. Antonia will give you
your old clothes back.”
That was what she had been after: the look of fear
and panic on Aledis’s face!
A host of questions flooded Aledis’s mind. What
could she do? Where could she go? Barcelona was at the far end of
the earth, and besides, what did she have left there? Arnau was
dead! The journey from Barcelona to Figueres flashed through her
mind, and she felt all the horror, humiliation, and shame in her
every bone. And now Pau was looking for her!
“No ... ,” Aledis stammered out, “I couldn’t do
that!”
“I don’t need other people’s problems,” Francesca
told her.
“Protect me!” Aledis begged her. “I’ve nowhere to
go. I have no one to turn to.”
She was sobbing out loud, still on her knees in
front of Francesca. She did not dare look up.
“I can’t. You’re pregnant.”
“That was a lie too,” wailed the girl.
She crawled over to Francesca’s legs. Francesca did
not move.
“What would you do in return?”
“Whatever you wish!” Aledis cried. Francesca hid
her smile. That was the promise she had been waiting for. How often
had she wrung a similar one out of girls like Aledis? “Whatever you
wish,” Aledis said again. “Protect me, hide me from my husband, and
I’ll do whatever you wish.”
“You know what we are,” the other woman
insisted.
What did that matter? Arnau was dead. She had
nothing. She had no one left ... apart from a husband who would
stone her if he found her.
“Please, I beg you, hide me. I’ll do whatever you
want!”
FRANCESCA ORDERED ALEDIS not to go with any of the
soldiers; Arnau was well-known in the royal army.
“You’re to work in secret,” she told her the next
day, as they prepared to move on. “I wouldn’t want your husband
...” Aledis agreed before she had even finished. “You mustn’t let
yourself be seen until the war is over.” Aledis nodded again.
That same night, Francesca sent Arnau a message:
“It’s all arranged. She won’t bother you anymore.”
THE NEXT DAY, instead of heading for Perpignan,
where King Jaime of Mallorca was installed, Pedro the Third decided
to lead his army toward the coast and the town of Canet. Here,
Ramon, the local viscount, was honor bound to hand over his castle
because of the vassalage he had sworn after the conquest of
Mallorca, when the Catalan king had allowed him to go free when he
had taken Bellver castle.
So it turned out. Viscount Canet handed over his
castle to King Pedro, and the army was able to rest and eat well
thanks to the generosity of the local peasantry, who were counting
on the fact that the royal army would soon move on to Perpignan. At
the same time, King Pedro linked up with his navy.
While he was at Canet, he received yet another
mediator. This time it was no less a figure than a cardinal, the
second one who had interceded on Jaime of Mallorca’s behalf. King
Pedro dismissed this emissary as well, and set about studying the
best way to lay siege to the city of Perpignan. While the king
waited for more supplies from the sea, the six days that the army
was camped at Canet saw them attacking the castles and fortresses
that lay between the coast and Perpignan.
In the name of the king, the Manresa host took the
castle of Santa Maria de la Mar. Other companies assaulted the
castle at Castellarnau Sobirà, and Eiximèn d’Esparca, with his
Almogavars and other knights, besieged and finally took Castell-
Rosselló.
Castell-Rosselló was not a simple frontier post
like Bellaguarda. It was one of the forward defenses of the
Roussillon capital. Outside its walls the same war cries of the
Almogavars were heard, and the same crash of their spears and
daggers. This time they were reinforced by the bloodcurdling shouts
of several hundred more soldiers, all of them anxious for combat.
The fortress proved much harder to overrun than Bellaguarda: the
fight for the walls was bitter, and several battering rams had to
be swung into action to force a way through.
The crossbowmen were the last to rush in through
the gaps in the defenses. This was nothing like the victory at
Bellaguarda. Soldiers and civilians, including women and children,
were ready to defend the castle with their lives. Arnau was soon
involved in vicious hand-to-hand fighting.
He dropped his crossbow and drew his knife. All
around him, hundreds of men were locked in combat. The whistle of a
sword blade jolted him back to his own situation. He jumped aside
instinctively, and the sword skimmed past him. With his free hand,
Arnau grabbed the wrist holding the weapon and lunged with his
dagger. He did this mechanically, as he had been taught during the
endless lessons Eiximèn d’Esparca’s captain had given him. He had
been taught to fight; he had been shown how to kill; and yet nobody
had shown him how to thrust a knife into another man’s abdomen. His
adversary’s chain mail deflected the blade, and although still held
by the arm, the man succeeded in whirling his sword and wounding
Arnau in the shoulder.
It was only a second, but it was long enough for
Arnau to realize he had to dispatch the man as quickly as possible.
He gripped his dagger even more firmly and jabbed it under the
chain mail, into his enemy’s stomach. The defender was still
brandishing his sword, but with less strength now. Arnau thrust the
dagger upward. He could feel the warmth of the man’s insides on his
hand. He lifted him off the ground; the sword fell from his grasp.
Arnau found himself staring face-to-face at the soldier. The man’s
lips were moving, only a few inches from his own face. Was he
trying to tell him something ? Over the din of battle, Arnau could
hear his death rattle. What was he thinking? Could he see death
coming? As if his bulging eyes had sent him a warning, Arnau
wheeled round just as another defender was about to leap on
him.
He did not hesitate. Arnau’s dagger sliced the air,
then through his new adversary’s throat. Arnau stopped thinking. It
was he who looked for more death. He fought; he shouted at the top
of his lungs. He thrust and sank his blade into the flesh of his
enemies not once but many times, without paying any attention to
their faces or their pain.
He killed.
When it was all over and the defenders of Castell-
Rosselló had surrendered, Arnau looked down at himself. He was
spattered with blood, and his whole body was trembling from his
exertions.
He looked round him: the heaps of bodies reminded
him of the battle. He had not had the time to see any of his
adversaries as people. He had not shared their pain or taken pity
on their souls. Now, though, the faces he had not seen through
their veil of blood came back to haunt him, claiming respect for
the vanquished. Arnau would often remember the blurred features of
all those he had killed.
IN MID-AUGUST, THE royal army made camp once more
between Canet castle and the coast. Arnau had stormed
Castell-Rosselló on the fourth of August. Two days later, King
Pedro ordered his troops to strike camp, and since the city of
Perpignan refused to pay homage to him, the Catalan armies laid
waste to the surrounding area: Basoles, Vernet, Soles, San Esteve
... They uprooted vines, olive groves, and all other trees in their
way. The only ones they did not touch were fig trees: was this
merely a whim on the part of King Pedro? They burned mills and
crops, destroyed farmland and villages, but never once laid siege
to the capital, Perpignan, where King Jaime had sought
refuge.
15 August 1343
Solemn campaign mass
DRAWN UP ON the beach, the entire royal army paid
homage to the Virgin of the Sea. Pedro the Third had yielded to the
pressure from the Holy Father and agreed to call a truce with Jaime
of Mallorca. The news ran through the ranks like wildfire. Like
most of the others, Arnau could not concentrate on what the priest
was saying in the mass: they all stood sad and contrite. This time,
the Virgin was no consolation to Arnau. He had killed. He had
chopped down trees. He had destroyed vines and crops before the
terrified gaze of peasants and their children. He had helped raze
entire villages, the homes of honest people. King Jaime had secured
his truce; King Pedro had given way. Arnau remembered the priests
haranguing them in Santa Maria de la Mar: “Catalonia needs you!
King Pedro needs you! Go to war!” What war? There had only been
killing. Skirmishes in the countryside when the ones to suffer had
been ordinary people and loyal soldiers ... and children, who would
go hungry the next winter when the supplies of grain ran out. What
war? The one that bishops and cardinals had fought, acting as
go-betweens for sly, scheming kings? The priest went on with his
homily, but Arnau was not listening. Why had he been made to kill?
What use were all those dead?
The mass ended. The soldiers split into small
groups.
“What about the booty we were promised?”
“Perpignan is rich, very rich,” Arnau heard someone
say.
“How is the king going to pay his soldiers now,
when he did not have enough before?”
Arnau strolled among the different groups. What did
he care about booty? What was important to him was the way the
children had looked at him, like the one who, clutching his
sister’s hand, had watched fearfully as Arnau and other soldiers
trampled their vegetables and scattered the grain that was meant to
feed them that winter. “Why?” his innocent eyes seemed to implore.
“What harm have we done you?” The children had probably been left
in charge of the vegetable patch: they stood rooted to the spot,
tears rolling down their cheeks, until the great Catalan army had
finished destroying their meager possessions. As they left, Arnau
did not have the heart to cast them a backward glance.
The army was going home. The columns of soldiers
filtered along the roads of Catalonia, still followed by all the
hangers-on, prostitutes, and traders who had also seen their dreams
of riches dashed.
BARCELONA DREW NEARER. The different hosts
dispersed to return to the towns they had come from. Others were to
cross the city. Arnau noticed that, like his companions, he had a
new spring in his step. Some of the soldiers were smiling openly:
they were going home. Maria’s face flashed into his mind. “All
arranged,” he had been told. “Aledis will not trouble you anymore.”
That was all he wanted, that was what had driven him to war.
Maria’s face smiled at him.