As soon as Arnau stepped into the house, Mar flung herself into his arms. Guillem was already there; he sat in a chair without saying a word. Joan, who had also arrived, was looking on with his usual taciturn expression.
Mar was taken aback when Arnau, perhaps more vigorously than necessary, freed himself from her embrace. Joan came up to congratulate him, but Arnau brushed him off too. He sank into a chair next to Guillem. The others all stared at him, not daring to say anything.
“What’s wrong?” Joan asked at length.
“I’m to be married!” said Arnau, raising his hands above his head. “The king has decided to make me a baron and to marry me to his ward. That’s the favor he is granting me for having saved his capital! He’s marrying me off!”
Joan thought about what he had heard, then smiled and responded: “Why are you complaining?”
Arnau glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. Next to Arnau, Mar’s whole body had begun to shake. Donaha, who was standing in the kitchen doorway, was the only one to notice. She came bustling over and helped her stay on her feet.
“What is so bad about the idea?” Joan insisted. Arnau did not even bother to look at him. As she heard the friar speak, Mar began to retch. “What is wrong with you marrying? And with the king’s ward, no less. You will become a Catalan baron.”
Afraid she was going to be sick, Mar went with Donaha to the kitchen.
“What’s the matter with Mar?” asked Arnau.
The friar took a few moments to answer.
“I’ll tell you what’s the matter,” he said finally. “She should be getting married too! Both of you should be married. It’s a good thing that King Pedro has more sense than you.”
“Leave me, will you, Joan?” said Arnau wearily.
The friar lifted his arms in the air and left the room.
“Go and see what’s wrong with Mar,” Arnau told Guillem.
“I don’t know what’s wrong,” he told Arnau a few minutes later, “but Donaha told me not to worry. It’s a woman’s thing.”
Arnau turned to him. “Don’t talk to me about women,” he moaned.
“We can’t go against the king’s wishes, Arnau. Perhaps ... given a bit of time, we can find a solution.”
But they were not given any time. King Pedro the Third fixed June 23 as the date when he would set off in pursuit of the king of Castille. He ordered his fleet to assemble in the port of Barcelona that day, and let it be known that before leaving he wanted the matter of the marriage of his ward Eleonor to the rich merchant Arnau settled. A court official came one morning to Arnau’s countinghouse to tell him as much.
“That means I have only nine days left!” Arnau complained to Guillem as soon as the official had left. “Less perhaps!”
What could this Eleonor be like? Just thinking about her kept him awake. Old? Beautiful? Friendly, pleasant, or arrogant and cynical like all the other nobles he had known in his life? How could he marry a woman he had never even met? He confided the task of finding out about her to Joan.
“You have to do it for me. Find out what she is like. I can’t stop worrying about what is in store for me.”
“It’s said,” Joan told him the same day that the official had appeared in the countinghouse, “that she is the bastard daughter of one of the Catalan infantes, one of the king’s uncles, although nobody dares say for certain exactly who he is. Her mother died giving birth to her; that’s why she was taken into court—”
“But what is she like, Joan?” Arnau interrupted him.
“She is twenty-three years old and attractive.”
“What about her character?”
“She’s a noblewoman,” was all Joan would say.
Why tell Arnau what he had heard about Eleonor? “She’s definitely attractive,” they had told him, “but she always looks as though she is angry with the whole world. She is spoiled, fickle, haughty, and ambitious.” The king married her to a nobleman, but he died soon afterward, and as she had no children she returned to court. Was the king granting Arnau a favor? A royal reward? The people Joan spoke to had laughed at the idea. The king could not tolerate Eleonor anymore, so who better to marry her off to than one of the richest men in Barcelona, a money changer who could well be a source of loans? Whatever happened, King Pedro came out winning: he was getting rid of Eleonor and at the same time gaining access to Arnau and his wealth. No, there was no reason to tell him all this.
“What do you mean when you say she is a noblewoman?”
“Exactly that,” said Joan, trying to avoid Arnau’s eyes. “She’s noble, she’s a woman, and therefore she has a well-defined character, as all of them do.”
Eleonor had also been making inquiries on her own side. The more she heard, the angrier she became: her husband-to-be had been a bastaix, a member of a guild that derived from the slaves employed in the port, the freed slaves. What was the king doing, marrying her to a bastaix? Everyone told her he was rich, very rich: but what did she care about his money? She lived at court and wanted for nothing. Then when she discovered Arnau was the son of a runaway serf who had himself been born a serf, she decided she must see the king. How could he expect her, the daughter of an infante, to marry someone of that ilk?
Pedro the Third would not even see her. He ordered that the wedding take place on June 21, two days before he left for Mallorca.
HE WAS TO be married the next day. In the royal chapel at Santa Agata.
“It’s a small chapel,” Joan explained. “It was built at the start of the century by Jaime the Second at the behest of his wife, Blanca de Anjou. It’s dedicated to the relics of Christ’s passion in the same way as the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, where the queen was born.”
It was to be an intimate affair: Joan was the only person accompanying Arnau. Mar had refused to attend. Ever since Arnau had announced his marriage, she had shied away from him. Whenever they were in a room together, she said nothing, and all her previous smiles had stopped.
That was why this final evening Arnau approached her and asked her to go for a walk with him.
“Where?” asked Mar.
Where?
“I don’t know ... what about Santa Maria? Your father adored the church. Did you know it was there that I met him?”
Mar agreed, so they left the countinghouse and walked down to the still unfinished façade of Santa Maria. The masons had begun work on the two octagonal towers that were to flank it, and the sculptors had already set to with hammer and chisel on the tympanum, doorposts, mullions, and archivolts. Arnau went into the church with Mar. The ribbed vaults of the central nave’s third arch were already stretching up toward the keystone, like a spider’s web protected by the wooden scaffolding as they grew.
Arnau was only too aware of Mar standing beside him. She was almost as tall as he was, and her hair flowed down to her shoulders. She smelled of freshness, of herbs. Most of the workmen stared admiringly at her; he could see it in their eyes, even if they turned away as soon as they realized Arnau was looking at them. Her fragrance wafted across to him in waves as she walked down the nave.
“Why don’t you want to come to my wedding?” he asked her point-blank.
Mar said nothing. She looked desperately around the church.
“They haven’t even allowed me to be married in my Santa Maria,” muttered Arnau.
The girl still made no response.
“Mar ...” Arnau waited for her to turn toward him. “I would have liked you to be with me on my wedding day. You know I don’t want to do it, that it’s against my will, but the king ... I won’t insist anymore, all right?” Mar nodded. “If I don’t insist, can things be the same between us as they were before?”
Mar looked at the ground. There was so much she would have loved to tell him ... But she could not refuse him what he asked; she could not refuse him anything.
“Thank you,” said Arnau. “If you had failed me ... I don’t know what would happen to me if those I most care about failed me!”
Mar shivered. That was not the sort of feeling she was looking for. She wanted love. Why had she agreed to come with him like this? She gazed up at the apse of the church.
“You know, Joan and I saw them raising that keystone,” Arnau told her when he saw the direction she was looking in. “We were only boys then.”
At that moment, the master glassmakers were hard at work on the clerestory, the set of windows under the apse roof. They had already finished the upper tier, where the Gothic arch was rounded off with a small rose window. After the clerestory, they would work on the set of big arched windows underneath. They placed small pieces of colored glass, held by strips of lead, into the window space. The sunlight streamed in through the glass.
“At that time,” Arnau went on, “I was lucky enough to talk to the great Berenguer de Montagut. I remember him saying that we Catalans need no more decoration than space and light. He pointed to the apse where you’re looking now, then drew his hand down toward the high altar as though the light were pouring down. I told him I understood what he was talking about, but in fact I could not imagine what he meant.” Mar looked at him. “I was only young,” he said to justify himself, “and he was the master builder, the great Berenguer de Montagut. Now I do understand.” He went closer to Mar and raised a hand up toward the rose window high in the apse. Mar tried to hide the shiver that ran through her when he touched her. “Do you see how the light comes into the church?” Then he drew his hand down toward the altar, just as Berenguer had done all those years ago, although now he could point to shafts of colored light flooding in. Fascinated, Mar followed Arnau’s hand. “Take a good look. The stained glass facing the sun is in bright colors: reds, yellows, and greens, to take advantage of the strong Mediterranean light. The others are white or blue. All through the day as the sun moves round, the color in the church interior changes, and the stones reflect all the different hues. How right Berenguer was! It’s like having a new church every day, every hour, as if a new one were constantly being born, because although the stone is dead, the sun is alive and different each day; the reflections change with it.”
The two of them stood enthralled by the warm, colored light.
After a while, Arnau took Mar by the shoulders and turned her toward him.
“Don’t leave me, Mar, I beg you.”
Next day at dawn, in the dark, overornate chapel of Santa Agata, Mar tired to hide her tears as she witnessed the ceremony.
Arnau and Eleonor stood stiff and unmoving in front of the bishop. Eleonor looked straight ahead of her all the time. At the beginning of the ceremony, Arnau turned to her once or twice, but she did not deign to turn her head in his direction. From then on, he merely glanced at her occasionally out of the corner of his eye.
39
As SOON AS the wedding ceremony was over, the new barons of Granollers, San Vicenc, and Caldes de Montbui left for Montbui castle. Joan told Arnau of the questions that Eleonor’s steward had asked. Where did Arnau think she was going to sleep? In rooms above a vulgar countinghouse? What about her servants? And her slaves? Arnau made him be quiet, but agreed to leave Barcelona that same day, provided Joan went with them.
“For what reason?” the friar asked.
“Because I think I am going to need your good offices.”
Eleonor and her steward left on horseback. She rode sidesaddle, while a groom walked alongside holding the reins. Her scribe and two maidens rode mules, and a dozen or so slaves pulled as many mules loaded down with all her possessions.
Arnau rented a cart.
When the baroness saw the ramshackle vehicle arrive, drawn by two mules and carrying the scant possessions that Arnau, Joan, and Mar were bringing with them—Guillem and Donaha had stayed in Barcelona—her eyes blazed fiercely enough to light a torch. This was the first time she had really looked at Arnau and her new family; they had been married, they had gone through the ceremony before the bishop and with the king and his wife in attendance, but she had never even deigned to consider them.
They left Barcelona with an escort provided by the king. Arnau and Mar sat up on the cart, while Joan walked alongside. The baroness urged her horse on so that they would arrive at the castle as quickly as possible. It came into sight before sunset.
Perched on the top of a hill, it was a small fortress where until their arrival the local thane had lived. Many peasants and serfs were curious to see their new lords, so that by the time they were close to the castle, more than a hundred people had thronged around them, wondering who this man could be, so richly dressed but traveling in a broken-down cart.
“Why are we stopping now?” asked Mar when the baroness gave the order for everyone to come to a halt.
Arnau shrugged.
“Because they have to hand over the castle to us,” Joan explained.
“Don’t we have to go in for them to do that?” asked Arnau.
“No. The Customs and Practices of Catalonia prescribe something different : the thane, his family, and their retinue have to leave the castle before they hand it over.” As he was saying this, the heavy gates of the fortress swung slowly open, and the thane appeared, followed by the members of his family and all his servants. When he reached the baroness, he gave her something. “You’re the one who should receive those keys,” Joan told Arnau.
“What do I want with a castle?”
As the thane and his party passed by the cart, he could not hide a sly smile. Mar flushed. Even the servants stared openly at them.
“You shouldn’t allow it,” Joan said again. “You are their lord now. They owe you respect and loyalty—”
“Listen, Joan,” said Arnau, interrupting him, “let’s get one thing clear: I don’t want any castle, I am not and have no wish to be anyone’s lord and master, and I have not the slightest intention of staying here any longer than is strictly necessary to sort out whatever needs sorting out. As soon as that’s done, I am going back to Barcelona. If the lady baroness wishes to live here in her castle, so be it. It’s all hers.”
This outburst brought the first smile of the day to Mar’s face.
“You can’t leave,” Joan insisted.
Mar’s face fell. Arnau turned to confront the friar.
“What do you mean, I can’t? I can do as I choose. Am I not the baron? Don’t the barons leave home for months on end to follow the king?”
“Yes, but they are going to war.”
“Thanks to my money, Joan, thanks to my money. It seems to me more important that somebody like me accompanies the king than any of those nobles who are always asking for easy loans. Well,” he added, looking toward the castle, “what are we waiting for now? It’s empty, and I’m tired.”
“By law, there still has to be—” Joan began.
“You and your laws,” Arnau snapped at him. “Why are you Dominicans so concerned about legal matters? What is there still—”
“Arnau and Eleonor, barons of Granollers, San Vicenc, and Caldes de Montbui!” The cry echoed out over the valley that lay beneath the castle hill. Everyone looked up to the tallest tower in the fortress. Eleonor’s steward, his hands cupped to amplify the sound, was shouting at the top of his voice: “Arnau and Eleonor, barons of Granollers, San Vicenc, and Caldes de Montbui! Arnau and Eleonor ... !”
“That was still to come: the official announcement that the castle has changed hands,” Joan concluded.
The baroness moved forward.
“At least he mentioned my name,” Arnau said.
The steward was still shouting with all his might.
“Without that, your possession of the castle would not be legal,” the friar concluded.
Arnau was about to say something, but thought better of it and merely shook his head wearily.
INSIDE THE CASTLE yard, behind the walls and around the keep, the usual conglomeration of buildings had been put up haphazardly over the years. There was a long hall with a vast dining room, kitchens, and pantries, with other rooms on the upper floor.
Scattered around outside the hall were a handful of wooden buildings that housed the servants and the small garrison of soldiers.
The captain of the guard, a small, broad-beamed man who looked unkempt and filthy, came out to officially greet Eleonor and her party. They all went into the large dining chamber.
“Show me where the thane lived,” Eleonor screamed.
The captain pointed to a stone staircase whose only adornment was a stone balustrade. The baroness started up the steps, followed by her steward, the scribe, and her maidens. She completely ignored Arnau.
The three Estanyols stood in the middle of the hall, watching as the slaves carried in all Eleonor’s possessions.
“Perhaps you should—” Joan started to say.
“Don’t interfere, Joan,” Arnau said curtly.
For some moments, they surveyed the great hall: the high ceiling, huge hearth, armchairs, the candelabra, and the table with room for a dozen guests. Then Eleonor’s steward appeared on the stairs. He came down toward them but stopped three steps before the bottom.
“The lady baroness,” he said in fluted tones, without speaking to anyone in particular, “says she is very tired tonight and does not want to be disturbed.”
The steward was about to turn on his heel when Arnau halted him.
“Hey, you!” he shouted. The steward turned back toward him. “Tell your lady mistress not to worry. No one is going to disturb her ... ever,” he hissed. Mar’s eyes opened wide, and she raised her hands to her mouth. The steward turned to make his way up the stairs once more, but Arnau again called out to him: “Hey! Which are our rooms?” The steward shrugged. “Where’s the captain of the guard?”
“He’s attending my lady.”
“Well, go upstairs and find her, and get the captain to come down. And be quick about it, because if you aren’t I’ll see to it you are castrated, and the next time you announce the handover of a castle you’ll be singing it.”
The steward gripped the balustrade tightly, confused at this violent threat. Could this be the same man who had sat quietly the whole day as his cart bumped and jolted along? Arnau’s eyes narrowed. He strode over to the staircase, pulling out the bastaix dagger he had insisted on wearing to his wedding. The steward did not have time to see that in fact it was completely blunt: before Arnau had taken three steps, he fled upstairs.
Cathedral of the Sea Page 43
