Cathedral of the Sea

by Ildefonso Falcones

  “But he’s only a boy,” one of the guild aldermen said.

  “He’s not strong enough. How will he be able to carry sacks or stones on his back?” asked another.

  “He’s very young,” insisted a third.

  Arnau gazed at them all, eyes open wide.

  “Everything you say is true,” the priest admitted, “but neither his size, his strength, nor his youth prevented him from defending money that was rightfully yours. But for him, your collection box would be empty.”

  The bastaixos studied Arnau awhile longer.

  “I think we could try him out,” Ramon said finally, “and if he is not up to it...”

  Someone in the group agreed.

  “All right,” one of the aldermen said eventually, looking across at his two companions. Neither of them demurred. “We’ll take him on trial. If he shows his worth over the next three months, we’ll accept him fully into the guild. He will be paid in proportion to the work he does. Here,” he said, handing Arnau the Mallorcan’s dagger, which he was still holding, “this can be your bastaix knife. Father, write that in the book too, so that the boy has no problems of any kind.”

  Arnau could feel the priest’s hand gripping his shoulder. He did not know what to say, but he smiled his thanks to the stone carriers. He was a bastaix! If only his father could see him!

  18

  “WHO WAS IT? Do you know him, lad?”

  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!”

  DAWN HAD BROKEN over the city.

  “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.”

  IN APRIL THE ships put out to sea again, after being hauled up on the beach since October. The days grew longer, and the big trading vessels began to enter and leave the city. No one involved—the merchants, owners, pilots—wanted to spend longer than was strictly necessary in the dangerous port of Barcelona.

  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?”

  He put the pad on the support and made sure the leather thongs fit round his forehead.

  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 lis
tened 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.