Cathedral of the Sea

“Are you hungry?” Joan nodded. “Well, if you want supper you had better have some now.”

The friar sat beside Eleonor at one end of Arnau’s long dining table. Two servants offered them white wheat bread, wine, soup, and roast goose with pepper and onions.

“Didn’t you say you were hungry?” asked Eleonor when she saw that Joan was merely playing with the food on his plate.

Joan looked across at his sister-in-law and said nothing. They did not exchange another word that evening.

Several hours after he had trudged upstairs to his room, Joan heard noises in the palace. Several servants had gone out into the yard to receive Arnau. They would offer him food and he would refuse, just as he had done on the three previous occasions that Joan had decided to wait up for him: Arnau had sat in one of the chambers, and waved away their offers with a weary gesture.

JOAN COULD HEAR the servants coming back. Then he heard Arnau’s footsteps outside his door, as he slowly made for his bedroom. What could he say to him if he went out and greeted him? He had tried to talk to him on the three occasions he had waited up for him, but Arnau had been completely withdrawn and had answered his brother’s questions in monosyllables : “Do you feel well?” “Yes.” “Did you have a lot of work at the exchange?” “No.” “Are things going well?” No answer. “What about Santa Maria?” “Fine.” In the darkness of his room, Joan buried his face in his hands. Arnau’s footsteps had faded away. What could he talk to him about? About her? How could he hear from Arnau’s lips the fact that he loved her?

Joan had seen Mar wipe away the tear running down Arnau’s cheek. “Father?” he had heard her say. He had seen Arnau tremble. He had turned and seen Eleonor smile. He had needed to see Arnau suffer to understand... but how could he confess the truth to him now? He could he tell him he had been the one... ? The sight of that tear came back into his mind. Did he love her so much? Would he be able to forget her? Nobody was there to comfort Joan when yet again he got down on his knees and prayed until dawn.

“I SHOULD LIKE to leave Barcelona.”

The Dominican prior studied the friar: he looked haggard, with sunken eyes circled with dark lines. His black habit was filthy.

“Do you think, Brother Joan, that you are capable of taking on the role of inquisitor?”

“Yes,” Joan assured him. The prior looked him up and down. “If I can only leave Barcelona, I will feel better.”

“So be it. Next week you are to leave for the north.”

His destination was a region of small farming villages dedicated to growing crops or raising livestock. They were hidden in valleys and mountains, and their inhabitants were terrified by the arrival of an inquisitor. The Inquisition was nothing new to them: since more than a century earlier, when Ramon de Penyafort was charged by Pope Innocent the Fourth with bringing the institution to the kingdom of Aragon and the principality of Narbonne, these villages had suffered visits from the black friars. Most of the doctrines that the Catholic Church considered heretical came through Catalonia from France: first the Cathars and the Waldensians, then the Beghards and finally the Templars when they were chased out by the French king. The border regions were the first to come under these heretical influences, and many of their nobles were condemned and executed: Viscount Arnau and his wife, Ermessenda; Ramon the lord of Cadí; and Guillem de Niort, the deputy of Count Nuno Sane in the Cerdagne and Coflent. These were the lands Joan was called upon to work in.

“Your Excellency.” He was greeted by a party of the leading citizens of one of these villages. They all bowed before him.

“Do not call me ‘Excellency,’” insisted Joan, urging them to straighten up. “Simply say, ‘Brother Joan.’”

In his brief experience, this scene had already been repeated time and again. The news of his arrival, accompanied by a scribe and half a dozen soldiers from the Holy Office, always preceded him.

Now he found himself in the main square of the village. He surveyed the four men who still stood in front of him with bowed heads. They had taken off their caps, and shifted uneasily. Although there was no one else in the square, Joan knew that many pairs of hidden eyes were watching him. Did they have so much to hide?

After being received in this way, Joan knew they would offer him the best lodgings in the village. There he would find a table that was too well stocked for the possibilities of people like these.

“I only want a piece of cheese, some bread, and water. Take away all the rest and make sure my men are seen to,” he repeated once again after installing himself at the table.

The kind of house he was put up in was becoming familiar as well. It was a humble, simple dwelling, but stone-built, unlike most of the other buildings that were nothing more than mud or wooden shacks. The table and a few chairs were the only furniture in the room, the center of which was the hearth.

“Your Excellency must be tired.”