37
TO THE RELIEF of everyone in Arnau’s
family, Joan decided to move to Santa Caterina convent.
“That is the proper place for me,” he told his
brother, “but I’ll come and visit you every day.”
Arnau, who had noticed how uncomfortable his
goddaughter and Guillem had been during supper the previous
evening, did not insist more than was strictly necessary.
“Do you know what he said to me?” he whispered to
Guillem when they were getting up from their meal at midday. The
Moor bent closer. “He asked what we have done to see that Mar is
married.”
Without straightening up, Guillem looked across at
the girl, who was helping Donaha clear the table. Find a husband
for her? Why, she was only ... a woman! Guillem turned to Arnau.
Neither of them had ever looked at her as they did now.
“What has become of our little girl?” Arnau
whispered.
The two men gazed at her again: she was lively,
beautiful, serene, and self-assured.
As she picked up the food bowls, Mar looked back at
them.
Her body was already that of a woman: it was curved
and shapely, and her breasts were beginning to show underneath her
smock. She was fourteen.
Mar glanced at them again, and saw them staring
openmouthed at her. This time instead of smiling she looked
embarrassed, if only momentarily.
“What are you two staring at?” she bridled. “Don’t
you have anything better to do?” she said, standing in front of
them defiantly.
They both nodded as one. There was no doubt about
it: she had turned into a woman without their even noticing
it.
When they were safely in the countinghouse, Arnau
said: “She’ll have a princess’s dowry. Money, clothes, a house ...
no, a palace!” At this, he turned toward his companion. “What has
happened about the Puig family?”
“That means she’ll leave us,” said Guillem, as if
he had not heard Arnau’s question.
The two men sat for a while in silence.
“She’ll give us grandchildren,” Arnau said
eventually.
“Don’t fool yourself. She’ll give her husband
children. Besides, if we slaves cannot have children, we have even
less right to grandchildren.”
“How often have I offered to free you?”
“What would I do with freedom? I’m fine as I am.
But Mar ... a married woman! I don’t know why, but I’m already
beginning to hate her husband, whoever he may be.”
“Me too,” Arnau admitted.
They turned toward each other, and both of them
burst out laughing.
“But you didn’t answer my question,” said Arnau
once they had recovered their composure. “What’s happened with the
Puig family? I want that palace for Mar.”
“I sent instructions to Filippo Tescio in Pisa. If
anyone can achieve what you are after, he’s the one.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That he was to pay pirates if necessary, but that
the Puigs’ commissions were not to reach Barcelona, and those that
had left the port should not arrive at their destinations. That he
should steal the goods or set fire to them if need be, but that
none of them should arrive.”
“Did he reply?”
“Filippo? No, he would never do that. He will not
put anything in writing or entrust the affair to anyone else. If it
got out... We have to wait for the end of the seagoing season. That
will be in less than a month. If the Puig family’s commissions have
not returned by then, they won’t be able to pay their debts.
They’ll be ruined.”
“Have you bought up their credit notes?”
“You are Grau Puig’s main creditor.”
“They must be suffering by now,” Arnau muttered to
himself.
“Haven’t you seen them?” Arnau turned sharply to
him. “They’re down at the beach all the time. Before it was the
baroness and one of her children; now that Genis is back from
Sardinia, he has joined them. They spend hours scanning the horizon
in search of a mast... and when a ship appears and comes into port
but isn’t one of theirs, the baroness curses the waves. I thought
you knew...”
“No, I didn’t know.” Arnau said nothing for a few
moments. “Tell me when one of our ships is due in port.”
“SEVERAL SHIPS ARE coming in together,” Guillem
told him one morning as they were walking back from the Consulate
of the Sea.
“Is the Puig family there?”
“Of course. The baroness is so close to the water
the waves are licking her shoes...” Guillem fell silent. “I’m
sorry, I didn’t mean to ...”
Arnau smiled.
“Don’t worry,” he said, reassuring him. Then he
went up to his bedroom, where he slowly put on his finest clothes,
the ones Guillem had finally convinced him he should buy.
“A man in your position,” he had argued, “cannot
appear badly dressed at the exchange or the consulate. That is what
the king decrees, and so do your saints; Saint Vincent, for example
...”
Arnau made him be quiet, but listened to his
advice. Now he donned a white sleeveless shirt made of the finest
malines cloth and trimmed with fur, a red silk damascene doublet
that came down to his knees, black hose, and black silk shoes. He
fastened the doublet round his waist with a wide belt that had gold
threads and was studded with pearls. Arnau completed his attire
with a marvelous black cloak that Guillem had discovered in one of
their ships’ expeditions beyond Dacia. It was lined with ermine and
embroidered with gold and precious stones.
When he stepped into the countinghouse, Guillem
nodded his approval. Mar was about to say something, but changed
her mind. She watched as Arnau went out of the door: she ran to it
and from the street outside saw him walk down to the beach, his
cloak rippling in the sea breeze and the precious stones sparkling
all round him.
“Where’s Arnau going?” she asked Guillem, coming
back into the countinghouse and sitting opposite him in one of the
clients’ chairs.
“To collect a debt.”
“It must be a very important one.”
“It is, Mar,” said Guillem, pursing his lips, “but
this is only the first installment.”
Mar began to play with the ivory abacus. How often,
hidden in the kitchen, had she watched as Arnau worked on it? His
face was always serious, and he concentrated hard while he moved
the counters and noted down figures in his books. Mar shivered the
length of her spine.
“Is something wrong?” asked Guillem.
“No... no.”
Why not tell him? Guillem would understand, she
said to herself. Except for Donaha, who could not help but smile
whenever she saw Mar hiding in the kitchen to spy on Arnau, nobody
else was aware of it. All the girls who met in the merchant
Escales’s house talked about the same thing. Some of them were
already betrothed, and liked nothing better than to praise the
virtues of their husbands-to-be. Mar listened to them, but always
avoided their questions to her. How could she mention Arnau? What
if he found out? Arnau was thirty-four; she was only fourteen. But
one of the girls was betrothed to someone even older than Arnau!
Mar would have loved to be able to tell someone. Her friends could
chatter about money, appearance, attractiveness, manliness, or
generosity, but she knew that Arnau was better than any of them!
Did not the bastaixos Mar occasionally met on the beach tell
her that Arnau had been one of King Pedro’s bravest soldiers? Mar
had discovered his old weapons in the bottom of a chest. When she
was all alone she would pick them up and caress them, imagining
Arnau surrounded by enemies and fighting them off valiantly as the
bastaixos had told her he did.
Guillem studied the young girl. Mar sat there, the
tip of her finger on one of the abacus counters, staring into
space. Money? Bags and bags of it. Everyone in Barcelona knew that.
And as for his kindness ...
“Are you sure nothing’s wrong?” Guillem asked
again, startling her out of her daydream.
Mar blushed. Donaha always claimed that anybody
could read her thoughts, that the name of Arnau was on her lips,
her eyes, her whole face. What if Guillem knew this too?
“No... ,” she repeated, “nothing.”
Guillem replaced the abacus counters and Mar smiled
at him... with a sad expression. What could be going through her
mind? Perhaps Brother Joan was right; she was already of
marriageable age, and here she was, shut up in a house with two
men...
Mar took her finger off the abacus.
“Guillem.”
“Tell me.”
She fell silent.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” she said finally, getting up
from her chair.
Guillem watched her as she left the room; it was
hard to admit it, but the friar was probably right.
HE WENT UP to them. He had walked to the shore
while the ships, three galleys and a carrack, entered the port. The
carrack belonged to him. Isabel was dressed in black, and with one
hand held on to her hat. Her stepsons, Josep and Genis, were
standing beside her, with their backs to him. All three were
peering desperately at the ships. “They won’t bring you any
relief,” thought Arnau.
As he strode by in his best clothes,
bastaixos, boatmen, and merchants had all fallen
silent.
“Look at me, you harpy!” Arnau thought and waited,
a few steps from the water’s edge. “Look at me! The last time you
did...” The baroness turned slowly toward him; her sons did the
same. Arnau took a deep breath. “The last time you did, my father
was hanging above my head.”
The bastaixos and boatmen were muttering to
one another.
“Is there something you need, Arnau?” asked one of
the aldermen.
Arnau shook his head, not taking his eyes off
Isabel’s face for a moment. The others moved away, and Arnau found
himself next to the baroness and his cousins.
He breathed deeply once more. Defiantly, he stared
Isabel in the eye for a few more seconds, then glanced at his
cousins, and finally looked out to sea, smiling.
The baroness’s lips tightened. She too turned
toward the sea, following Arnau’s gaze. When she looked toward him
again, he was already striding away, the sunlight glinting off the
precious stones on his cloak.
JOAN WAS STILL intent on seeing Mar married. He
proposed several candidates: it was not difficult to find them. As
soon as they heard the size of Mar’s dowry, nobles and merchants
came running, but... how was the girl herself to be told? Joan
offered to do it, but when Arnau told Guillem as much, the Moor was
resolutely against the idea.
“You have to do it,” he said. “Not a monk she
hardly knows.”
Ever since Guillem had insisted in this way, Arnau
could not take his eyes off the girl. Did he know her? They had
lived in the same house for years now, but it had been Guillem who
always looked after her. All he had done had been to enjoy her
being there, to hear her laughter and cheery banter. He had never
talked to her about anything serious. Now, whenever he considered
approaching her and asking her to go for a walk with him, on the
beach or—why not?—to Santa Maria, whenever he thought of telling
her they had to discuss a serious matter, he realized he knew
little about her ... and hesitated. Where was the little girl he
used to carry on his shoulders?
“I don’t want to marry any of them,” she told them.
Arnau and Guillem looked at each other. Eventually, Arnau had
persuaded the Moor they should bring the subject up together.
“You have to help me,” he had pleaded with
him.
Mar’s eyes lit up when the two men mentioned
marriage to her. They were sitting behind their accounting table,
with her in front of them on the other side, as if this were
another commercial transaction. But she shook her head at the
mention of each of the five candidates that Brother Joan had
suggested.
“But, Mar,” Guillem insisted, “you have to choose
someone. Any girl would be proud to marry one of the names we have
mentioned.”
Mar shook her head again.
“I don’t like them.”
“Well, you have to do something,” said Guillem,
looking to Arnau for support.
Arnau studied the young girl. She was on the verge
of tears. Her head was lowered, but he could tell from her
trembling bottom lip and troubled breathing that tears were not far
away. Why would a girl react in that way when they had just
proposed such good matches for her? The silence lasted an eternity.
Eventually, Mar raised her eyes slightly and peered at Arnau. Why
make her suffer?
“We’ll go on looking until we find someone she does
like,” he said to Guillem. “Do you agree, Mar?”
She nodded, got up from the chair, and left the
room. The two men sat staring at each other.
Arnau sighed.
“And I thought the difficult part was going to be
telling her!”
Guillem said nothing. He was still gazing at the
kitchen doorway through which Mar had disappeared. What was going
on? What was his little girl trying to hide? When she had heard the
word “marriage” she smiled, and her eyes had lit up, but then
afterward ...
“Just wait until you see how Joan reacts when he
hears... ,” Arnau grumbled.
Guillem turned to him, but in the end did not
reply. What did it matter what the friar thought?
“You’re right. We’d best go on looking.”
ARNAU TURNED TOWARD Joan.
“Please,” he said, “this isn’t the moment.”
They had gone into Santa Maria to calm down. The
news was not good, but here, with his Virgin, the constant sounds
of the stonemasons, and the smiles of all the workmen, Arnau felt
at ease. Joan, though, had found him and would not let him be: it
was Mar here, Mar there, Mar everywhere. After all, what business
was it of his?
“What reasons can she have against marriage?” Joan
insisted.
“This isn’t the moment, Joan,” Arnau said
again.
“Why not?”
“Because we are facing another war.” The friar
looked startled. “Didn’t you know? King Pedro the Cruel of Castille
has just declared war on us.”
“Why?”
Arnau shook his head.
“Because he’s been wanting to do so for some time
now,” he growled, raising his arms. “The excuse was that our
admiral, Francesc de Perellos, captured two Genoese boats carrying
olive oil off the coast of Sanlúcar. The Castillian king demanded
they be released, and when our admiral paid no attention, he
declared war on us. That man is dangerous,” muttered Arnau. “I
understand that he has earned his nickname: he is spiteful and
vengeful. Do you realize what this means, Joan? We are at war with
Genoa and Castille at the same time. Does it seem like a good
moment to be bothering ourselves with getting the girl married?”
Joan hesitated. They were standing beneath the keystone for the
nave’s third arch, surrounded by scaffolding erected for the
construction of the ribs. “Do you remember?” asked Arnau, pointing
up at the keystone. Joan looked up and nodded. They had been
children when the first stone had been put in place! Arnau waited a
moment and then added: “Catalonia is not going to be able to
finance this. We’re still paying for the campaign against Sardinia,
and now we have to fight on another front.”
“I thought you merchants were in favor of
conquest.”
“We wouldn’t open any new trade routes in Castille.
No, it’s a difficult situation, Joan. Guillem was right.” At the
mention of the Moor’s name, Joan looked askance. “We have only just
conquered Sardinia and the Corsicans have risen against us: they
did so as soon as the king left the island. We are at war with two
powers, and the king’s coffers are empty; even the city councillors
seem to have gone mad!”
They began to walk toward the high altar.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that there is no money available in
Barcelona. The king is pressing ahead with his building schemes:
the royal dockyards and the new city wall—”
“But both of them are needed,” said Joan,
interrupting him.
“The dockyards, possibly, but after the plague
there is no need for the wall.”
“Well, then?”
“Well, the king is still exhausting his reserves.
He has obliged all the surrounding villages to contribute to the
new wall, because he says one day they will take refuge inside it.
He has also created a new tax for it: the fortieth part of all
inheritances is to be set aside for its construction. As for the
dockyards—all the fines that the consulates collect are poured into
building them. And now here we are with another war.”
“Barcelona is rich.”
“Not any longer, Joan, that’s the problem. The more
money the city gave him, the more privileges the king granted it.
As a consequence, the councillors have taken on so much that they
cannot finance everything. They’ve increased the taxes on meat and
wine. Did you know that part of the city’s budget went to keeping
those prices down?” Joan shook his head. “It used to be half of the
city’s budget. Instead of that, now they’ve brought in new taxes.
The city’s debts will bring ruin to us all, Joan—you mark my
words.”
The two men stood lost in thought in front of the
high altar. When they finally left the church, Joan resumed the
attack.
“What about Mar?”
“She will do whatever she wants, Joan.”
“But...”
“No buts about it. That is my decision.”
“KNOCK,” ARNAU SAID to him.
Guillem knocked with the heavy door knocker. The
sound echoed along the deserted street. Nobody came to open.
“Knock again.”
Guillem knocked again, not once but seven, eight
times. At the ninth, the peephole opened.
“What’s the matter?” the eyes on the other side of
the door asked. “What’s all this fuss? Who are you?”
Clinging to Arnau’s arm, Mar could feel him grow
tense.
“Open up!” Arnau commanded.
“In whose name?”
“Arnau Estanyol,” Guillem said solemnly, “owner of
this building and of everything there is in it, including yourself
if you are a slave.”
“Arnau Estanyol, the owner of this building...”
Guillem’s words resounded in Arnau’s ears. How long had it been?
Twenty years? Twenty-two? Behind the spyhole, the eyes
hesitated.
“Open up!” Guillem insisted.
Arnau looked up at the heavens. He was thinking of
his father.
“What... ?” the girl began to ask.
“Nothing, nothing,” Arnau said with a smile, just
as one of the doors that allowed people on foot into the palace
opened in the huge double gate.
Guillem stood back to let Arnau past.
“Both gates, Guillem. I want them to open both
gates wide.”
Guillem went inside, and Arnau and Mar could hear
him giving orders.
“Can you see me, Father? Do you remember? This was
where they gave you that bag of money that led to your downfall.
What else could you have done?” Arnau recalled the rising in Plaza
del Blat; people shouting, his father one of them, all of them
pleading to be given grain! Arnau could feel a lump rise in his
throat.
The gates opened and Arnau went in.
Several slaves were standing in the courtyard. On
the right was the staircase up to the principal rooms. Arnau did
not look up at them, but Mar had no hesitation, and could see
shadows moving behind the windows. The stables were in front of
them: the grooms were lined up outside. “My God!” Arnau’s whole
body shook. He leaned on Mar, and she glanced at him.
“Here you are,” said Guillem to Arnau, handing him
a rolled-up parchment.
Arnau did not take it. He knew what was in it. He
had learned its contents by heart ever since Guillem had shown it
to him the previous day. It was an inventory of all Grau Puig’s
possessions that the magistrate had awarded Arnau in payment of his
debts: the palace, the slaves—Arnau looked in vain for the name of
Estranya on the list—together with several properties outside
Barcelona, among which was a small house in Navarcles in which he
decided to allow the Puig family to live. Some jewels; two pairs of
horses with all their harnesses; a carriage; suits and other
clothing; pots, pans, and crockery; carpets and
furniture—everything in the palace was detailed on this rolled-up
parchment that Arnau had read time and again the previous
evening.
He glanced once more at the door to the stables,
then surveyed all the cobbled courtyard ... until his eyes alighted
on the foot of the staircase.
“Shall we go up?” asked Guillem.
“Yes. Take me to your mas—to Grau Puig,” Arnau
corrected himself.
The slave led them upstairs. Mar and Guillem looked
all around them; Arnau stared straight ahead. The slave led them to
the main chamber.
“Announce me,” Arnau said to Guillem before the
doors were opened.
“Arnau Estanyol!” his friend cried out, flinging
them open.
Arnau did not remember what this main chamber was
like. As a young boy he had not even looked when he had crossed
it... on his knees. Nor did he pay much attention this time. Isabel
was seated in a chair next to one of the windows. Josep and Genis
were standing on either side of her. The former, like his sister,
Margarida, was married now. Genis was still unmarried. Arnau looked
for Josep’s family, but could not see them. In another chair sat
Grau Puig, a drooling old man.
Isabel confronted him, eyes blazing.
Arnau stood in the middle of the room, next to a
hardwood dining table that was twice as long as the one in his
countinghouse. Mar and Guillem were both behind him. The family
slaves had clustered in the doorway.
Arnau spoke in a loud enough voice for everyone in
the room to hear.
“Guillem, those shoes are mine,” he said, pointing
to Isabel’s feet. “Get her to take them off.”
“Yes, Master.”
Mar was taken aback, and turned toward the Moor.
Master? She knew Guillem was a slave, but had never before heard
him speak to Arnau in this way.
Guillem signaled to two of the slaves standing in
the doorway, and the three of them walked over to Isabel. The
baroness still sat there haughtily, challenging Arnau with her
look.
One of the slaves knelt down, but before he could
touch her, Isabel took off her own shoes and let them fall to the
floor. She stared straight at Arnau.
“I want you to gather up all the shoes in the house
and burn them out in the yard,” said Arnau.
“Yes, Master,” said Guillem once more.
The baroness was still gazing at him
defiantly.
“Those chairs,” said Arnau, pointing to the ones
she and Grau Puig were sitting in. “Take them out of here.”
“Yes, Master.”
Grau’s children lifted him out of his chair. The
baroness stood up before the slaves could take the chair from under
her and stack it with the others in a corner of the chamber.
But she was still defying him.
“That robe is mine too.”
Did he see her tremble?
“You don’t mean to say... ?” spluttered Genis Puig,
still carrying his father.
“That robe is mine,” Arnau insisted, staring
straight at Isabel.
Was she trembling?
“Mother,” said Josep, “go and change.”
Yes, she was trembling.
“Guillem,” shouted Arnau.
“Mother, please.”
Guillem went up to the baroness.
She was trembling!
“Mother!”
“What do you want me to put on?” howled Isabel to
her stepson. Then she turned again to face Arnau. Her whole body
shook. “Do you really want me to take my robe off?” her eyes asked
him.
Arnau frowned sternly, and slowly, very slowly,
Isabel lowered her gaze to the floor. She was sobbing with
rage.
Arnau waved to Guillem to leave her. For a few
moments, the only sound in the main chamber of the palace was of
her sobbing.
“By tonight,” Arnau said at length to Guillem, “I
want this building empty. Tell them they may go back to Navarcles,
which they should never have left.” Josep and Genis stared at him;
Isabel was still weeping. “I’m not interested in those lands. Give
them some of the slaves’ clothes, but no footwear. Burn it all.
Sell everything else and close this house up.”
Arnau turned round and saw Mar, her face flushed.
He had forgotten all about her. He took her by the arm and they
walked out of the room.
“You can close the gates now,” he told the old man
who had let them into the palace.
The two of them walked in silence to his
countinghouse, but before they went in, Arnau came to a halt.
“Shall we go for a walk on the beach?”
Mar nodded.
“Has your debt been repaid now?” she asked him when
they could see the sea in front of them.
They walked on a few steps.
“It never will be, Mar,” she heard him murmur.
“Never.”