Cathedral of the Sea

by Ildefonso Falcones

  “He was arrested three days ago, while presiding over the Consulate of the Sea tribunal.”

  “What is he accused of?” asked the baron.

  “That isn’t very clear. Some say heresy, others say it’s because he consorts with Jews, others still say it is because he has had relations with a Jewish woman. He has not been brought before the Inquisition yet; he is being held in the dungeons of the bishop’s palace. Half the city supports him; the other half is against, but they are all clamoring at his money change to claim their deposits back. I’ve seen them. They’re all fighting to get their money.”

  “Are they being paid?” asked Genis.

  “For the moment, yes, but everyone knows that Arnau Estanyol lent a lot of money to people who didn’t have a penny, and if he cannot call in those loans ... That’s why everyone is fighting to get there first: they don’t think he’ll be able to pay up for long.”

  Jaume de Bellera and Genis Puig exchanged looks.

  “The fall has begun,” said the knight.

  “Find the whore who gave me suck!” the baron ordered the captain. “Shut her in the castle dungeons!”

  Genis Puig added his voice to that of the lord of Bellera, urging the official to hurry up.

  “That diabolical milk was not meant for me,” he had heard the baron complain time and again. “It was for that son of hers, Arnau Estanyol. And now he’s the one who has money and is the king’s favorite, while I have to endure the consequences of the sickness his mother gave me.”

  Jaume de Bellera had been forced to talk to the bishop for the epilepsy he suffered from not to be considered the Devil’s work. All the same, the Holy Inquisition would no doubt see Francesca as possessed.

  “I’D LIKE TO see my brother,” Joan abruptly asked Nicolau Eimerich as soon as Joan entered the bishop’s palace.

  The grand inquisitor’s eyes narrowed. “Your duty is to make him confess and repent.”

  “What is he accused of?”

  Nicolau Eimerich stiffened behind the table where he had received Joan.

  “You’re asking me to tell you what he is accused of? You are an accomplished inquisitor—but you wouldn’t be trying to help your brother, would you?”

  Joan looked at the floor.

  “All I can tell you is that it is very serious. I’ll permit you to see him provided you confirm that the reason for your visits is to obtain Arnau’s confession.”

  Ten lashes! Fifteen, twenty-five ... How often had he himself given that command in the past few years? “Until he confesses!” he would instruct the captain accompanying him. And now ... now he was being asked to obtain his own brother’s confession. How was he supposed to do that? Joan’s only reply was to spread his hands in a mute appeal.

  “It’s your duty,” Eimerich reminded him.

  “He’s my brother. He’s all I have ...”

  “You have the Church. You have all of us, your brothers in Christ.” The grand inquisitor fell silent for a while. “Brother Joan, I was waiting for you to arrive. If you don’t accept the terms, I’ll have to take charge of him myself.”

  WHEN THE STENCH from the dungeons in the bishop’s palace hit him, Joan could not repress a grimace of distaste. As he was being led down the dark passageway to where Arnau was imprisoned, he could hear water dripping from the walls and rats scuttling out of the way. He felt one run between his legs. He shuddered, as he had done when he heard Nicolau Eimerich’s threat: “I’ll have to take charge of him myself.” What could Arnau have done? How was he going to tell him that he, his own brother, had promised to ... ?

  The jailer opened the door to the dungeon. A vast, evil-smelling chamber appeared before Joan. Shadowy figures moved in the darkness, and the clink of the chains that bound them grated on Joan’s ears. The Dominican friar could feel his stomach reacting against the foul conditions and tasted bile in his mouth. “Over there,” said the jailer, pointing to a dark shape hunched in a corner. He left without waiting for any answer. The sound of the door slamming behind him made Joan start. He stood close to the door, searching in the gloom: the only light came in through a small window high up on the outer wall. As soon as the jailer had left, he heard the sounds of chains once more. What seemed like a dozen shadows shifted in front of him. Did that mean they were relieved because it was not them the jailer had come for, or were they desperate for the same reason? Joan had no idea, unable to interpret the groans and laments that surrounded him. He went up to the shadowy bundle that he thought the jailer had pointed to, but when he knelt in front of the figure, the scarred, toothless face of an old woman peered up at him.

  He fell backward; the old crone stared at him for a few moments, then hastened to conceal her misery in the darkness once more.

  “Arnau?” whispered Joan, still spread-eagled on the floor. Then, when he got no reply, he repeated his brother’s name out loud.

  “Joan?”

  Joan hastened in the direction the voice had come from. He knelt before another shadowy figure, then took his brother’s head in his hands and pulled him toward him.

  “Holy Mother of God! What... What have they done to you? How are you?” Joan felt Arnau’s head: the hair was matted; his cheekbones were beginning to stand out from the gaunt cheeks. “Don’t they feed you?”

  “Yes,” Arnau replied. “A crust of bread and water.”

  When Joan’s fingers came up against the shackles round his brother’s ankles, he quickly drew his hands away.

  “Could you do something for me?” asked Arnau. Joan said nothing. “You’re one of them. You’ve always told me the grand inquisitor holds you in great esteem. This is unbearable, Joan. I don’t know how many days I’ve been in here. I was waiting for you...”

  “I came as soon as I could.”

  “Have you spoken to the grand inquisitor?”

  “Yes.” Despite the darkness, Joan tried to hide his features. The two of them fell silent.

  “And?” asked Arnau eventually.

  “What have you done, Arnau?”

  Arnau’s hand tightened on Joan’s arm. “How could you think that ... ?”

  “I need to know, Arnau. If I’m to help you, I need to know what they are accusing you of. You must be aware that they never say what the accusation is. Nicolau refused to tell me.”

  “So, what did you talk about?”

  “Nothing,” Joan said. “I didn’t want to talk about anything with him until I had seen you. I need to know what sort of accusation they are making if I am to convince Nicolau.”

  “Go and ask Eleonor.” Arnau remembered how he had seen his wife pointing at him through the flames licking around the body of an innocent man. “Hasdai is dead,” he said.

  “Eleonor?” queried Joan.

  “Does that surprise you?”

  Joan lost his balance, and leaned on Arnau for support.

  “What’s the matter, Joan?” his brother asked, trying to steady him.

  “It’s this place... and seeing you like this... I feel faint.”

  “Get out of here then,” Arnau encouraged him. “You’ll be more use to me on the outside than you will be trying to comfort me in here.”

  Joan stood up. His legs were weak. “Yes, I think you’re right.”

  Joan called the jailer and left the dungeon. He followed the fat man back up the passageway. He had a few coins on him.

  “Take these,” he said. The jailer put them in his purse without a word. “Tomorrow there’ll be more if you treat my brother properly.” The only sound was from rats scurrying along the passage. “Did you hear me?” he insisted. This time the reply was a deep growl that at least silenced the rats.

  JOAN NEEDED MONEY. As soon as he left the bishop’s palace, he headed for Arnau’s exchange table. When he arrived, he saw a crowd outside the small building on the corner of Canvis Vells and Canvis Nous from which Arnau had conducted his business affairs. Joan drew back.

  “That’s his brother!” one of the crowd shouted.

&
nbsp; Several of them rushed up to him. Joan was about to turn tail, but stopped when he saw that they had come to a halt a few steps from him. Of course they would not attack a Dominican. He stood as upright as possible and carried on walking.

  “What’s happened to your brother, Friar?” one of the men asked as he passed by.

  Joan confronted a man who was a good head taller than him.

  “My name is Brother Joan. I’m an inquisitor with the Holy Office,” he said, raising his voice as he explained his position. “When you speak to me, call me ‘my lord inquisitor.’”

  Joan looked up, staring the man straight in the eye. “What sins do you have to confess?” he inquired silently. The man took a couple of steps backward. Joan strode on toward the exchange, the crowd giving way before him.

  “I am Brother Joan, an inquisitor from the Holy Office!” he shouted outside the closed doors of the building.

  Three of Arnau’s assistants allowed him in. The room inside was in turmoil : account books were strewn all over the rumpled red cloth covering his brother’s money table. If Arnau could have seen it ...

  “I need money,” he told them.

  The three men looked at him in disbelief.

  “So do we,” responded the eldest, a man by the name of Remigi who had taken over from Guillem.

  “What’s that?”

  “We have hardly any money left, Brother Joan.” Remigi opened several money boxes on the table. “Look, there’s nothing in them.”

  “Doesn’t my brother have money?”

  “Not in cash. Why do you think there are all those people outside? They want their money. They’ve been besieging us for days now. Arnau is still a very rich man,” he said, trying to reassure the friar, “but it’s all invested—in loans, commissions, in business deals...”

  “Can’t you demand repayment of the loans?”

  “The main debtor is the king, and you know that His Majesty’s coffers are...”

  “Is there no one who owes Arnau money?”

  “Yes, lots of people do, but either they are loans that have not come to term, or ones that have, but... You know Arnau lent money to many people who have nothing. They can’t pay him back. Even so, when they heard about his situation, many of them came and paid back part of what they owed him, what little they could afford. But that is no more than a gesture. We cannot hope to cover all the deposits that way.”

  Joan turned back and pointed to the door. “So how is it that they can demand their money?”

  “In fact, they don’t have the right to. They all deposited their funds for Arnau to use on their behalf, but money is slippery, and the Inquisition...”

  Joan gestured for him to forget that he was also a member of the Holy Office. The jailer’s growl echoed in his ears.

  “I need money,” he repeated out loud.

  “I’ve already told you, there isn’t any,” Remigi protested.

  “But I need some,” Joan insisted. “Arnau needs it.”

  “Arnau needs it, and above all,” thought Joan, turning to look at the door again, “he needs breathing space. This scandal can only do him harm. People will think he is ruined, and then no one will want to know him ... We’ll need help.”

  “Is there nothing we can do to calm those people down? Is there nothing we can sell?”

  “We could pass on some commissions. We could put the creditors together in them, instead of Arnau,” said Remigi. “But to do that, we would need his authority.”

  “Is mine enough?”

  The official stared at him.

  “It has to be done, Remigi.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” the other man said after a few moments’ thought. “In fact, we would not be losing money. We would simply be switching things around. They could keep some investments. We would still have others. If Arnau were not involved, that would calm them down ... but you will have to give me your written authority.”

  Remigi quickly prepared a document. Joan signed it. “Gather some money by first thing tomorrow,” he said as he signed. “It’s cash we need,” he insisted when the assistant looked at him hesitantly. “Sell something off cheaply if necessary, but we must have money.”

  As soon as Joan had left the exchange house and calmed down the creditors outside once more, Remigi began to redistribute the investments. That same afternoon, the last ship leaving Barcelona carried with it instructions for Arnau’s agents all over the Mediterranean. Remigi acted swiftly; by the next day, the satisfied creditors were spreading the news that Arnau’s business affairs were sound.

  48

  FOR THE FIRST time in almost a week, Arnau drank fresh water and ate something other than a crust of bread. The jailer forced him to his feet by kicking him, and then sluiced a bucket of water on the floor. “Better water than excrement,” thought Arnau. For a few seconds, all that could be heard was the water splashing on the stones, and the obese jailer’s labored breathing. Even the old woman who had given herself up to death and kept her face buried in her filthy rags looked up at Arnau.

  “Leave the bucket,” the bastaix ordered the jailer as he was about to leave.

  Arnau had seen him mistreat prisoners just because they had dared to meet his gaze. Now the jailer lunged at him with outstretched arms, but when he saw Arnau defying him, he pulled away just before making contact. He spat, and threw the bucket on the ground. Before he shut the door behind him, he kicked at one of the shadows looking on.

  After the ground had absorbed the water, Arnau sat down again. He could hear a church bell ringing. That and the feeble rays of sun that managed to penetrate the filthy window that was at street level outside were his only links to the world. Arnau raised his eyes to the tiny window and strained to hear more. Santa Maria was bathed in light, but did not yet have any bells, and yet the sound of chisels on stone, the hammering on timbers, and the workmen’s calls on the scaffolding could be heard some distance from the church. Whenever the distant echo of those sounds reached the dungeons, that and the sunlight transported Arnau’s spirit to accompany all those working so devotedly for the Virgin of the Sea. Arnau felt once more the weight of that first block of stone he had carried to Santa Maria. How long ago had that been? How things had changed! He had been little more than a boy, a boy who’d found in the Virgin the mother he had never known...

  At least, thought Arnau, he had managed to save Raquel from the terrible fate that seemed to await her. As soon as he had seen Eleonor and Margarida pointing to them, Arnau had made sure Raquel and her family fled the Jewish quarter. Not even he knew where they had gone ...

  “I want you to go and look for Mar,” he told Joan on his next visit.

  Still two paces away from his brother, the friar tensed.

  “Did you hear me, Joan?” Arnau tried to approach him, but the chains cut into his legs. Joan had not moved. “Joan, did you hear me?”

  “Yes... yes... I heard you.” Joan went up to his brother and embraced him. “But... ,” he started to say.

  “I have to see her, Joan.” He gripped him by the shoulders and gently shook him. “I don’t want to die without speaking to her again...”

  “My God! Don’t say that... !”

  “Yes, Joan. I might well die in here, all alone, with only a dozen helpless unfortunates as witness. I don’t want to perish without having had the chance to see Mar. It’s something ...”

  “What do you want to say to her? What can be that important?”

  “Her forgiveness, Joan, I need her forgiveness.” Joan tried to struggle free from his brother’s hands, but Arnau would not let him. “You know me. You are a man of God. You know I’ve never done anyone any harm, apart from that... child.”

  Joan succeeded in freeing his shoulders ... and fell on his knees before his brother. “It wasn’t—” he began to say.

  “You’re the only one I have, Joan,” Arnau interrupted him. He also sank to his knees. “You have to help me. You’ve never let me down. You can’t do so now. You�
�re all I have, Joan!”

  Joan said nothing.

  “What about her husband?” was all he could think of to say. “He might not allow ...”

  “He’s dead,” Arnau replied. “I found that out when he ceased making payments on a cheap loan I had offered him. He died fighting for the king, in the defense of Calatayud.”

  “But—” Joan tried to say again.

  “Joan ... I’m tied to my wife by an oath that prevents me from being with Mar as long as she lives... But I must see her. I have to tell her my feelings, even though we can’t be together ...” Arnau slowly recovered his composure. There was another favor he wanted to ask his brother. “Would you go and see my exchange office... I want to know how things are going.”

  Joan gave a sigh. That very morning, when he had gone to his brother’s exchange, Remigi had handed him a bag of money.

  “It wasn’t a good deal,” he told Joan.

  Nothing was a good deal. When he left Arnau after promising to do his best to find Mar, Joan handed over money to the jailer at the door to the dungeon.

  “He asked for a bucket.”

  How much was a bucket worth to Arnau...? Joan gave the jailer another coin.

  “I want that bucket cleaned constantly.” The jailer stuffed the coins in his purse and set off up the passageway. “One of the prisoners in there is dead,” added Joan.

  The jailer merely shrugged.

  JOAN DID NOT even go out of the bishop’s palace. After leaving the dungeons, he went in search of Nicolau Eimerich. He knew all the palace corridors. How often in his younger days had he walked down them, proud of his responsibilities? Now other young men hastened along, neat and tidy priests who openly stared at him in astonishment.

  “Has he confessed?”

  Joan had promised Arnau he would try to find Mar.

  “Has he confessed?” repeated the grand inquisitor.

  Joan had spent a sleepless night preparing for this conversation, but nothing he had thought of was any use now.

  “If he did, what penalty... ?”