Cathedral of the Sea

by Ildefonso Falcones

  “We’ll get by somehow—” Arnau started to say.

  “What are you talking about?” Guillem cut in. “You will have all the money you need. If you wish, you could buy the Calle de Montcada palace all over again.”

  “But that’s your money,” Arnau protested.

  “It’s our money. Look,” said Guillem, addressing them both. “Apart from you two, I have no one. What am I meant to do with the money I have thanks to your generosity? Of course it’s yours.”

  “No, no,” Arnau insisted.

  “You are my family. My child ... and the man who gave me freedom and riches. Does this mean you do not want me as part of your family?”

  Mar stretched out her arm to him. Arnau stuttered: “No ... that wasn’t what I meant at all ... Of course ...”

  “Well, if you accept me, you accept my money,” said Guillem. “Or would you rather the Inquisition took it?”

  His question forced a smile from Arnau.

  “Besides, I have great plans,” said Guillem.

  Mar sat looking back at the cove. A tear trickled down her cheek. She did not try to wipe it away, as it ran down and into the corner of her mouth. They were on their way back to Barcelona. To carry out an unjust punishment, to return to the Inquisition, to Joan, the brother who had betrayed Arnau ... and a wife he hated but from whom he could never be free.

  59

  GUILLEM HAD RENTED a house in La Ribera neighborhood. It was not luxurious, but was spacious enough for the three of them, with a room for Joan as well, Guillem thought when he gave his instructions. When he disembarked from the catboat in the port of Barcelona, Arnau was received with great affection by the workmen on the beach. Some merchants supervising the loading of their goods or coming and going from the warehouses also nodded as he passed by.

  “I’m not a rich man anymore,” Arnau said to Guillem as he returned the greetings.

  “News spreads quickly,” Guillem replied.

  Arnau had said that the first thing he wanted to do when he returned was to visit Santa Maria to thank the Virgin for his freedom. The confused image he had of the tiny statue dancing in the air above the heads of the crowd while he was being carried by the city councillors had become much clearer. But his plan was interrupted when they passed by the corner of Canvis Vells and Canvis Nous: the door and windows of his house—his countinghouse—had been thrown wide open. A group of curious onlookers had gathered outside. They stepped aside when they saw Arnau arrive, but he did not go in. The three of them recognized some of the pieces of furniture and other effects that the soldiers of the Inquisition were carrying out and piling on a cart by the front door: the long table, which hung over the back of the cart and had been tied on with ropes, the red rug, the metal shears to test fake coins, the abacus, the money chests ...

  Arnau’s attention was caught by a figure dressed in black who was noting down all the goods seized. The Dominican paused in his work and stared defiantly at him. The onlookers fell silent as Arnau realized where he had seen those eyes before: they belonged to one of the friars who had studied him during the tribunal sessions, behind the bench next to the bishop.

  “Vultures,” Arnau muttered.

  These were his possessions, his past, his moments of joy and of defeat. He would never have thought that to witness the way they were stripping him ... He had never attached any importance to material things, and yet it was a whole life they were carting away.

  Mar could feel Arnau’s palm grow sweaty.

  Someone in the small crowd started to jeer the friar. At once, the soldiers left the furniture and drew their weapons. Three other armed men appeared from inside the house.

  “They won’t allow the common people to humiliate them again,” warned Guillem, dragging Mar and Arnau away.

  The soldiers charged the group of spectators, who scattered in all directions. Arnau let himself be led away by Guillem, although he constantly looked back at the cart.

  They forgot about Santa Maria, where the soldiers were still chasing some of the onlookers. Instead, they skirted round the church until they came to Plaza del Born and their new home.

  THE NEWS OF Arnau’s return spread quickly through the city. The first people to arrive at his new house were missatges from the Consulate of the Sea. The official did not dare look Arnau in the face. When he addressed him, he used the title “Your Worship,” but he was there to give him the letter in which the Council of a Hundred stripped him of his position. Arnau held out his hand to the official, who finally raised his eyes.

  “It’s been an honor to work with you,” the official said.

  “The honor was all mine,” replied Arnau. “They don’t want anyone poor,” he told Guillem and Mar when the official and his soldiers had left the house.

  “We need to talk about that,” said Guillem.

  But Arnau shook his head. “Not yet,” he pleaded.

  Many other people came to visit Arnau in his new home. Some of them, like the alderman of the bastaix guild, he received personally; others of more humble station were happy simply to offer their best wishes to the servant who attended them.

  On the second day, Joan appeared. Ever since had had heard that Arnau was in Barcelona, Joan had been wondering what Mar could have told him. When the uncertainty became unbearable, he decided to face his fears and go to see his brother.

  When Joan entered the dining room, Arnau and Guillem stood up to greet him. Mar remained seated at the table.

  “You burned your father’s body!” Nicolau Eimerich’s accusation rang through Arnau’s mind as soon as he saw Joan. Until then, he had been trying to push the thought away.

  Still standing in the doorway, Joan stammered out a few words. Then he walked over toward Arnau, head lowered.

  Arnau’s eyes narrowed. So he had come to ask forgiveness. How could a brother ... ?

  “How could you do it?” he said when Joan was by his side.

  Joan’s gaze shifted from the floor to Mar. Had she not punished him enough? Did he have to confess everything to Arnau as well? She seemed surprised at his presence.

  “Why did you come here?” asked Arnau coldly.

  Joan searched desperately for an excuse.

  “We have to pay the expenses at the inn,” he heard himself say.

  Arnau’s hand chopped the air, and then he turned on his heel.

  Guillem called one of his servants and gave him a bag of money.

  “Go with the friar and pay the hostel bill,” he commanded.

  Joan turned to the Moor for support, but Guillem did not so much as blink. The friar walked back to the door and vanished through it.

  “What happened between you?” asked Mar as soon as Joan had gone.

  Arnau said nothing. Ought they to know? How could he explain that he had burned his father’s body, and that his own brother had denounced him to the Inquisition? He was the only one who knew.

  “Let’s forget the past,” he said at length, “at least as much as we can.”

  Mar sat in silence for a while, and then nodded.

  JOAN FOLLOWED GUILLEM’S slave out of the house. The young lad had to stop and wait for the friar several times on the way, because he kept stopping and peering blindly around him. They had taken the way to the corn exchange, which the boy knew well, but when they came to Calle de Montcada, the slave could not get Joan to follow him any farther. The friar would not budge from the gateway to Arnau’s palace.

  “You go and pay,” Joan told the boy, to be free of him. “I have another debt to settle,” he muttered to himself.

  Pere, the aged servant, led him into Eleonor’s chamber. As Joan walked along, he started muttering something, at first in a low whisper as he crossed the threshold, then louder as he climbed the stone staircase with Pere, who looked round at him in astonishment, and then in a roar as he entered the room where Eleonor was waiting for him:

  “I know you have sinned!”

  On her feet at the far end of the room, the baroness
surveyed him haughtily. “What nonsense are you talking, Friar?” she said.

  “I know you have sinned,” repeated Joan.

  Eleonor burst out laughing and turned her back on him.

  Joan stared at her richly embroidered robe. Mar had suffered. He had suffered. Arnau ... Arnau must have suffered even more than they had.

  Eleonor was still laughing, her face turned from him. “Who do you think you are, Friar?”

  “I am an inquisitor of the Holy Office,” Joan replied. “And in your case, I do not need any confession.”

  When she heard this harsh rejoinder, Eleonor turned to face him. She saw he had an oil lamp in his hand.

  “What... ?”

  Joan did not give her time to finish. He threw the lamp at her. The oil soaked the heavy material of her robe and caught fire.

  Eleonor screamed.

  By the time Pere could come to her aid, she was a flaming torch. He called the rest of the servants, and pulled down a tapestry to smother the flames. Joan pushed him aside, but other slaves were already rushing in, wild-eyed.

  Someone shouted for water.

  Joan looked at Eleonor, who was on her knees enveloped in flames.

  “Forgive me, Lord,” he muttered.

  He seized another lamp and went up to Eleonor. The hem of his habit also caught fire.

  “Repent!” he shouted, before he too was engulfed in flames.

  He emptied the second lamp on Eleonor and fell to the floor beside her.

  The rug they were on started to burn fiercely. Then the flames began to lick at the furniture in the room.

  By the time the slaves appeared with water, all they could do was throw it in from the doorway. Then, overcome by the dense smoke, they covered their faces and ran.

  60

  15 August 1384

  Feast of the Assumption

  Church of Santa Maria de la Mar

  SEVENTEEN YEARS had gone by.

  In the square outside Santa Maria, Arnau raised his eyes to the sky. The pealing of the bells filled the whole city of Barcelona. The sound made the hairs on his forearms stand on end, and he shuddered as the four church bells chimed. He had stood and watched as the four of them were raised to the bell tower: Assumpta, the largest, weighing almost a ton; Conventual, more than half a ton; Andrea, half that again; and Vedada, the smallest, hauled to the very top of the tower.

  Today Santa Maria, his church, was being inaugurated, and the bells seemed to give off a different sound from the one he had heard since they had been installed... or was it he who was hearing them differently? He looked up at the octagonal towers flanking the main façade: they were tall, slender, and light, built in three levels, each one narrower than the one below. They had tall arched windows open to the winds, with balustrades round the outside, and were topped by flat roofs. While they were being built, Arnau had been assured they would be simple, natural, with no spires or capitals—as natural as the sea, whose patron saint they were there to protect—and yet at the same time imposing and full of fantasy, as the sea also was.

  People dressed in their finest were congregating at Santa Maria. Some went straight into the church; others, like Arnau, stayed outside to admire its beauty and listen to its bells’ music. Arnau drew Mar to him. He was holding her on his right-hand side; to his left, tall, sharing his father’s joy, stood a youth of thirteen, with a birthmark by his right eye.

  Surrounded by his family, and with the bells still ringing, Arnau went into Santa Maria de la Mar. The others entering the church stopped to allow him through. This was Arnau Estanyol’s church. As a bastaix, he had carried its first stones on his back. As a moneylender and consul of the sea, he had offered it important donations. More recently, as a maritime insurance agent, he had donated more funds. Santa Maria had suffered its fair share of catastrophes: on the twenty-eighth of February, 1373, an earthquake that devastated Barcelona brought its bell tower crashing to the ground. Arnau was the first to contribute to its rebuilding.

  “I need money,” he had said to Guillem on that occasion.

  “It is yours,” replied the Moor, well aware of the disaster and of the fact that a member of the commission of works for Santa Maria had visited him that same morning.

  The fact was, fortune had smiled on them once more. On Guillem’s advice, Arnau had dedicated himself to maritime insurance. Unlike Genoa, Venice, or Pisa, Catalonia had no such provision, which made it a paradise for the first people to venture into this area of commerce. However, it was only the wise few like Arnau and Guillem who managed to survive. The Catalan financial system was on the verge of collapse, and threatened to take with it all those who had hoped to make quick profits either by insuring a cargo for more than its worth, which was often the last they heard of it, or by offering insurance on ships and goods even after it was known they had been seized by pirates, in the hope that the news was false. But Arnau and Guillem chose their ships and the risk involved carefully, and soon they had the same vast network of agents working for them in their new business as they had used in times gone by.

  On the twenty-sixth of December of 1379, Arnau could no longer ask Guillem if he might use some of their money for Santa Maria. The Moor had died suddenly a year earlier. Arnau had found him sitting in his chair out in the garden, as usual facing Mecca, to where, in what was an open secret, he always prayed. Arnau informed the members of the Moorish community, and they took Guillem’s body away under cover of night.

  That night in December 1379, Santa Maria had been ravaged by a terrible fire. It reduced the sacristy, choir, organs, altars, and everything else in the interior not made of stone to a pile of ashes. The stonework too suffered the effects of the fire, and the keystone depicting King Alfonso the Benign, father of Pedro the Ceremonious (who had paid for this part of the work), was completely destroyed.

  The king flew into a rage at the destruction of this homage to his august forebear, and demanded the effigy be re-created. The La Ribera neighborhood had too much to worry about to pay much heed to the monarch’s demands. All their money and effort went into a new sacristy, choir, organs, and altars; the equestrian figure of King Alfonso was cleverly reconstructed in plaster, stuck onto the stone, and painted red and gold.

  On the third of November 1383, the last keystone above the central nave, the one closest to the main door, was put in place. On the end was sculpted the coat of arms of the commission of works, in honor of all the anonymous citizens who had contributed to the construction of the church.

  Arnau glanced up at the keystone. Mar and Bernat did the same, and then, wreathed in smiles, the three of them made their way to the high altar.

  From the moment the heavy keystone had been lifted onto its scaffold, waiting for the columns of the arches to reach up to it, Arnau had repeated the same thing over and over: “That is our emblem,” he told his son.

  “Father,” Bernat retorted, “that’s the people of Barcelona’s emblem. Important people like you have their coats of arms engraved on the arches, the columns, in the chapels and in ...” Arnau raised his hand to try to stem the flow of his son’s words, but the boy rushed on: “You don’t even have your stall in the choir!”

  “This is the church of the people, my boy. Many men have given their lives for it, yet their names are nowhere to be found.”

  In his mind’s eye, Arnau saw himself as a youngster carrying blocks of stone from the royal quarry down to Santa Maria.

  “Your father,” Mar said, “has engraved many of these stones with his blood. There can be no greater homage than that.”

  Bernat turned to look at his father, eyes wide open.

  “I and many others, my son,” said Arnau, “many, many others.”

  August in the Mediterranean, August in Barcelona. The sun was shining with a splendor hard to equal anywhere else on earth. Before it filtered in through the stained glass of Santa Maria and played on color and stone inside, the sea reflected the light back to the sun, lending its rays an unmatched bea
uty. Inside the church, the shafts of light mingled with the quivering flames of thousands of candles lit on the high altar and the side chapels. The smell of incense filled the air, and organ music swelled in the perfect acoustics of the central nave.

  Arnau, Mar, and Bernat walked up to the high altar. Beneath the magnificent apse, surrounded by eight graceful columns and in front of a reredos, stood the small figure of the Virgin of the Sea. Behind the altar, which was covered in fine French lace that King Pedro had lent for the occasion (not without sending word beforehand from Vilafranca del Penedès that the cloths should be returned immediately after the celebration), Bishop Pere de Planella was preparing to say mass to consecrate the church.

  Santa Maria was so full that the three of them could not get close to the altar. Some of those in the congregation recognized Arnau and stood back to let him through, but he thanked them and stood where he was among the crowd: they were his people, his family. The only ones missing were Guillem ... and Joan. Arnau preferred to remember his brother as the young boy with whom he had discovered the world rather than as the bitter monk who had sacrificed himself in flames.

  Bishop Pere de Planella began the mass.

  Arnau was troubled. Guillem, Joan, Maria, his father... and that old woman. Why whenever he thought of those no longer with him did he always end up remembering her? He had asked Guillem to search for her and Aledis.

  “They have vanished,” the Moor told him.

  “They said she was my mother,” Arnau said out loud. “Search harder.”

  “I haven’t been able to find them,” Guillem told him again, some time later.

  “But ...”

  “Forget them,” Guillem had advised him, in a tone that brooked no argument.

  Pere de Planella was still saying mass.

  Arnau was sixty-three years old. He felt tired, and leaned on his son.

  Bernat squeezed his father’s arm affectionately. Arnau bent his mouth to his son’s ear and pointed toward the high altar.