Cathedral of the Sea

by Ildefonso Falcones

  Joan returned to the arguments he had learned from his masters: “A good husband should strive to control his wife’s natural wickedness by applying the following principles: firstly, woman should be governed by the man, and should submit to him. ‘Sub potestate viri eris,’ we are told in Genesis. Secondly, as Ecclesiastes says: ‘Mulier si primatum haber ... ”’ Joan hesitated. “‘Mulier si primatum habuerit, contraria est viro suo,’ which means that if it is the woman who rules at home, she will stand against her husband. Another principle is to be found in Proverbs: ‘Qui delicate nutrit servum suum, inveniet contumacem.’ That means that whoever is gentle with people meant to serve them—among whom are included women—will find rebellion where there should be humility, submission, and obedience. If, despite all this, wickedness is still apparent in a man’s wife, he should punish her by putting her to shame and through fear. He should correct her from the start, when she is still young, rather than wait for her to grow old.”

  Arnau listened in silence to his brother’s words.

  “Joan,” Arnau said once he had finished. “Do you think I could marry Aledis?”

  “Of course! But you ought to wait awhile until you have made your way in the guild and can support her. In any case, it would be wise to speak to her father before he promises her to anyone else, because if he does that, you are lost.”

  The image of Gastó Segura and his few blackened teeth seemed to Arnau like an unsurmountable obstacle. Joan guessed what his brother was afraid of.

  “You have to do it,” he insisted.

  “Would you help me?”

  “Of course.”

  Silence returned to the two straw pallets ranged on either side of the hearth.

  “Joan,” said Arnau after a few moments.

  “What is it?”

  “Thank you.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  The two brothers tried hard to sleep, but found it impossible. Arnau was too excited at the idea of marrying his beloved Aledis. Joan was lost in memories of his mother. Could Pone the coppersmith have been right? Wickedness was natural in women. A woman should be ruled by man. A man should punish his wife. Could the coppersmith have been right? How could he respect his mother’s memory and give his brother this kind of advice? Joan remembered his mother’s hand poking out of the tiny window of her prison, caressing his head. He remembered how he had hated—and still did—the coppersmith Ponc ... but what if he had been right?

  OVER THE NEXT few days, neither of them had enough courage to speak to the bad-tempered Gastó, whose situation as tenant in Pere’s house constantly reminded him of his misfortune at losing his own home. He became increasingly sour whenever he was in the house—which was the one time the two brothers had the opportunity to raise the question with him. His endless growls, protests, and insults continually made them posptone the idea.

  Arnau was still bewitched by the atmosphere Aledis generated. He watched her, followed her with his eyes and in his imagination. There was no moment in the day when he did not think of her, except when Gastó made his appearance: the presence of her father made his heart shrink.

  This was because, however much the priests and his own guild might forbid him from doing so, he could not take his eyes off Aledis when she, knowing she was alone with her plaything, seemed to take every opportunity to allow her loose, faded smock to press against her body. Arnau was ensnared by the vision: those nipples, breasts—Aledis’s entire body was calling out to him. “You will be my wife. One of these days you will be my wife,” he thought, his mind ablaze. He imagined her naked, his mind wandering along forbidden, unknown paths: the only naked female he had ever seen had been the tortured body of Habiba.

  On other occasions, Aledis bent over in front of Arnau. She did not kneel down, but bent from the waist, deliberately showing off her rear and the curves of her hips. She also took advantage of every opportunity she had to raise her smock above her knees and show her thighs. Or she would put her hands on the small of her back, pretending to feel a nonexistent pain, and bend backward so that he could see how flat and smooth her stomach was. Afterward she would smile or, making as if she had suddenly discovered Arnau’s presence, would seem embarrassed. When she went out, Arnau was left struggling to wipe the images from his mind.

  Whenever something like this happened, Arnau became even more determined to find the right moment to talk to Gastó.

  “What the devil are you two doing just standing there?” Gastó spluttered once, when the two lads came up to him with the ingenuous idea of asking for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Joan’s tentative smile vanished as soon as the tanner stepped between them, pushing them away from him.

  “You ask,” Arnau said to him on another occasion.

  Gastó was alone at the table downstairs. Joan sat opposite him, cleared his throat, and was just about to speak when the tanner suddenly looked up from the hide he was busy examining.

  “I’ll flay him alive! I’ll tear his balls off!” the tanner exploded, spitting saliva out between the gaps in his blackened teeth. “Simooó!” Joan shrugged in despair toward the figure of Arnau, who was hiding in the corner of the room.

  Simó came running. “How could you have stitched this so badly?” Gastó said, pushing the piece of leather under his nose.

  Joan got up from his chair and left them to it.

  But he and Arnau did not give up.

  “Gastó!” Joan shouted after him one evening when the tanner had left the house after supper, apparently in a good mood, and the two boys had followed him down to the beach.

  “What do you want?” he said, still striding on.

  “At least he’s letting us speak,” the two boys thought.

  “I wanted ... to talk to you about Aledis ...”

  Hearing his daughter’s name, Gastó came to a sudden halt. He turned and brought his face so close to Joan’s that his rotten breath made the boy reel.

  “What’s she done?” Gastó respected Joan; he took him to be a serious young man. To hear him mention Aledis, combined with his naturally suspicious nature, made him think the lad was about to accuse her of something. The tanner could not allow the slightest stain on his precious jewel’s reputation.

  “Nothing,” said Joan.

  “What do you mean, nothing?” Gastó pressed him, his face still only inches away from Joan. “Why did you mention Aledis then? Tell me the truth. What has she done?”

  “Nothing, she’s done nothing, I swear.”

  “Nothing? And you, what about you?” he barked, turning to Arnau. Joan was relieved. “What have you got to say for yourself? What do you know about Aledis?”

  “Me? ... Nothing ...” Arnau’s hesitation served only to increase the tanner’s obsessive suspicions.

  “Tell me!”

  “There’s nothing ... no ...”

  “Eulàlia!” Gastó did not wait to hear any more. He bawled for his wife, and set off back to Pere’s house to find her.

  That night the two boys were overcome with guilt as they heard Eulàlia cry out in pain as Gastó tried to beat an impossible confession out of her.

  They tried to broach the subject twice more, but got nowhere. After several weeks, disheartened, they decided to speak to Father Albert. He smiled and promised to talk to Gastó on their behalf.

  “I’M SORRY, ARNAU,” Father Albert told him a week later. He had called the two boys to meet him on the beach. “Gastó Segura does not agree to your marrying his daughter.”

  “Why?” Joan wanted to know. “Arnau is a good person.”

  “Do you want my daughter to marry a slave from La Ribera?” the tanner had told the priest. “A slave who doesn’t earn enough to pay for a room?”

  Father Albert tried to convince him: “There are no slaves working in La Ribera. That was in olden times. You know it’s forbidden for slaves to work—”

  “It’s work for slaves.”

  “That’s in the past too,” the priest insisted. “Besides,” he a
dded, “I’ve found a good dowry for your daughter.” Gastó Segura, who thought the conversation had already finished, suddenly turned back to hear what the priest had to say. “It will allow her to buy a house ...”

  Gastó interrupted him once more: “My daughter doesn’t need any rich man’s charity! Keep your wiles for others!”

  When he heard Father Albert’s words, Arnau stared out to sea. Moonlight was shimmering across the water from horizon to shore, dying in the foam of the waves breaking on the beach.

  Father Albert let the lapping of the waves calm them. What if Arnau asked the reasons behind the tanner’s refusal? What could he tell him?“

  “Why?” stammered Arnau, still staring out at the horizon.

  “Gastó Segura is ... a very strange man.” Father Albert could not break the boy’s heart still further. “He wants a nobleman to marry his daughter! How can a mere tanner aspire to something like that?”

  A nobleman. Had the lad believed him? Nobody should feel belittled by the nobility. Even the waves lapping patiently, endlessly, on the shore seemed to be waiting for Arnau’s reply.

  A sob echoed along the beach.

  Father Albert put his arm round Arnau’s shoulder. He could feel his body shaking. He put his other arm round Joan, and the three of them stood gazing out to sea.

  “You will find a good wife,” said the priest after a while.

  “Not like her,” thought Arnau.

  PART THREE

  Chained to Passion

  21

  Second Sunday in July 1339

  Church of Santa Maria de la Mar

  Barcelona

  FOUR YEARS HAD passed since Gastó Seguro refused to give his daughter’s hand in marriage to Arnau the bastaix. A few months later, Aledis was married off to an old master tanner, a widower for whom his young bride’s charms more than made up for her lack of dowry. Until the moment she was given away, Aledis never left her mother’s sight.

  Arnau himself was now a tall, strong, and good-looking young man of eighteen. During those four years he had lived from and for the guild of bastaixos, the church of Santa Maria, and his brother Joan. He carried more than his share of goods and stone blocks; he gave money to the guild, and attended religious services devoutly. But he had not married, and the guild aldermen were worried that a lusty young man like him might fall into temptation, which would mean they would have to expel him from the brotherhood.

  Yet Arnau would not hear of marrying. When the priest told him Gastó wanted nothing to do with him, Arnau stood staring at the sea, thinking of the women who had been part of his life: he had not even known who his mother was; Guiamona had shown him affection, but then turned against him; Habiba had vanished in a welter of blood and pain (at night Arnau often still dreamed of Grau’s whip lashing her naked body); Estranya had treated him like a slave; Margarida had laughed at him at his moment of greatest humiliation; and Aledis—what could he say about her? It was thanks to her that he had discovered the man inside him, but she had soon abandoned him.

  “I have to take care of my brother,” he told the aldermen whenever they brought the matter up. “You know he has dedicated his life to the church, to serve God,” he would say while they thought of how to persuade him. “What better aim could there be in life?”

  At this the aldermen invariably fell silent.

  This was how Arnau lived throughout those four years: calmly, wrapped up in his work, Santa Maria, and above all, Joan.

  That second Sunday in July 1339 was a historic day for Barcelona. In January 1336, King Alfonso the Kind had died in the city, and after Easter that same year, his son Pedro was crowned in Zaragoza. He became Pedro the Third of Catalonia, Pedro the Fourth of Aragon, and Pedro the Second of Valencia.

  Between 1336 and 1339, the new monarch did not so much as visit Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia. Both the nobility and the merchants were concerned at this failure to pay homage to the kingdom’s most important city. They were all well aware of the new king’s dislike of the Catalan nobility: Pedro the Third was the son of Alfonso’s first wife, Teresa de Entenza, countess of Urgel and vice countess of Ager. Teresa had died before her husband became king, and Alfonso remarried, this time to Eleonor of Castille, an ambitious and cruel woman by whom he had two sons.

  Despite his conquest of Sardinia, King Alfonso was a weak, easily led man: Queen Eleonor quickly won large tracts of land and honors for her sons. Her next goal was to pursue her stepchildren, the children of Teresa de Entenza who were the heirs to the throne. Throughout the eight years of Alfonso the Kind’s reign, Eleonor never missed an opportunity to attack the Infante Pedro, who was still a young boy, as well as his brother, Jaime, count of Urgel. Only two Catalan nobles, Pedro’s godfather, Ot de Montcada, and Vidal de Vilanova, the knight commander of Montalbán, supported the cause of Teresa’s children. It was they who warned King Alfonso and the two brothers to escape before they were poisoned. Pedro and Jaime followed their advice, and hid in the mountains of Jaca in Aragon before finally securing the protection of the nobles of Aragon and seeking refuge in the city of Zaragoza, where they were protected by Archbishop Pedro de Luna.

  This was the reason why Pedro’s coronation broke with a tradition that had been upheld ever since the kingdom of Aragon had been united with the principality of Catalonia. While he ascended the throne of Aragon in Zaragoza, the right to rule Catalonia, which belonged to him as the count of Barcelona, had always been granted in Catalan territory. Until Pedro the Third, new monarchs first took the oath in Barcelona, and were later crowned in Zaragoza. Whereas the king took the crown of Aragon simply because he was the new monarch, as count of Barcelona he had to swear allegiance to the laws and customs of Catalonia, a ceremony that was regarded as essential before he could be crowned king.

  As count of Barcelona, prince of Catalonia, the monarch was seen by the Catalan nobility simply as primus inter pares. This was evident from the oath that they swore him: “We, who are as good as you, swear to Your Majesty, who is no better than us, that we will accept you as our king and sovereign liege, for as long as you respect all our freedoms and laws; if not, not.” As a result, when Pedro the Third was to be crowned, the Catalan nobles went to Zaragoza to demand that he come first to Barcelona to swear the oath there as all his predecessors had done. When the king refused, the Catalans walked out of the coronation. However, the king knew he must receive their oaths of loyalty, and so, despite renewed protests by the nobility and authorities in Barcelona, he chose to do so in the city of Lérida. In June 1336, after swearing to respect the Catalan customs and laws, he duly received their expressions of loyalty.

  So it was that on the second Sunday of July 1339, King Pedro paid his first visit to Barcelona, the city he had humiliated. Three reasons brought him there: the oath that his brother-in-law Jaime the Third, king of Mallorca, count of Roussillon and Cerdagne, and lord of Montpellier, had to swear as a vassal of the crown of Aragon; the general council of bishops of the province of Tarragona (to which Barcelona belonged); and the transfer of the remains of Saint Eulàlia the martyr from the church of Santa Maria to the cathedral.

  The first two events took place out of sight of ordinary people. Jaime the Third expressly asked that his oath of allegiance be given not in front of the populace, but in the palace chapel, before a small group of chosen nobles.

  The third event, however, became a public spectacle. Nobles, churchmen, and all the inhabitants of the city came out onto the streets. The most privileged among them accompanied the royal party as they first heard mass in the cathedral, then walked in procession down to Santa Maria, before finally returning to the cathedral with the martyr’s remains.

  All along the way, the streets were lined with people anxious to proclaim their king. Santa Maria’s apse was already roofed over; work had begun on the second vault, but a part of the original Romanesque church still survived.

  Saint Eulàlia was martyred during Roman rule, in the year 303. Her remains were kept
first in the Roman cemetery and then in the church of Santa Maria de las Arenas, which was built on the pagan burial ground once Emperor Constantine had issued his edict authorizing Christian worship. When the Arabs invaded Spain, the men in charge of the tiny church decided to hide the martyr’s remains. In 801, when the French king Louis the Pious liberated the city, Frodoí, the then bishop of Barcelona, decided to search for the saint’s relics. Once found, they were laid to rest in a small coffer in Santa Maria.

  In spite of being draped in scaffolding and surrounded by stones and building material, Santa Maria looked splendid for the royal visit. The archdeacon, Bernat Rosell, together with members of the commission of works, noblemen, beneficiaries, and other church dignitaries, all of them dressed in their finest robes, were there to greet the king. The bright colors of their garments were spectacular: the July morning sun poured in through the unfinished roof and windows of the church, glinting on the gold and metal adorning the vestments of those privileged enough to wait for the king inside.

  The sun also glinted on the blunt tip of Arnau’s dagger: the humble bastaixos had taken up a place of honor alongside all the important dignitaries. Some of them, Arnau included, stood outside the chapel of the sacraments, the one they looked after. Other bastaixos stood guard at the front doorway to the church, which was still part of the old Romanesque building.

  The bastaixos, formerly slaves or macips de ribera, enjoyed many privileges in Santa Maria de la Mar. As well as being responsible for the church’s main chapel and being the guardians of the main entrance, the masses for their celebrations were said at the high altar, the chief alderman of the guild kept the key of the Jesus chapel, and during Corpus Christi they were the ones who carried the statue of the Virgin, and also the lesser ones of saints Tecla, Catherine, and Macia. In addition, whenever a bastaix was close to death, the holy eucharist was carried to him, at whatever time of day or night, through the main doorway under its canopy.