133
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.”
134
“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.
135
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.
136
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.”
137
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.”
138
“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.”
Cathedral of the Sea
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