Cathedral of the Sea

“Four times? Five? Ten?”

“Four. Yes. That’s right. Four times.”

“What is the name of this woman?”

The scribe wrote it down.

“What other sins have you committed?”

“No ... nothing more, I swear.”

“Do not swear oaths in vain,” said Joan with slow emphasis. “Whip him.”

After ten lashes, the man confessed to fornicating with the woman and with several prostitutes when he went to market at Puigcerdà. He also confessed to having blasphemed, lied, and committed an endless number of minor sins. After a further five lashes he remembered the young widow.

“I have your confession,” Joan declared. “Tomorrow you are to be in the square to hear my sermo generalis, when I will tell you what your punishment is to be.”

The man did not even have time to protest before he was dragged out of the room on his knees by the soldiers.

Marta, Peregrina’s sister-in-law, confessed without any need to threaten her further. Joan ordered her to appear in the square the next day, then urged the scribe to move on to the next case.

“Bring in Anton Sinom,” the scribe told the captain, reading from his list.

As soon as he saw the Devil worshipper enter the room, Joan sat upright in his hard wooden chair. The man’s hooked nose, his high forehead, those dark eyes of his...

He wanted to hear his voice.

“Do you swear on the four Gospels?”

“I do.”

“What is your name?” asked Joan, even before the man was standing in front of him.

“Anton Sinom.”

The small, slightly stooped man answered his question flanked by two soldiers who towered over him. Joan was quick to catch the note of resignation in his voice.

“Has that always been your name?”

Anton Sinom hesitated. Joan waited.

“People here have always known me by that name,” Sinom said finally.

“And elsewhere?”

“Elsewhere I had another name.”

Joan and Anton stared at each other. The little man did not lower his eyes.

“Was it a Christian one?”

Anton shook his head. Joan suppressed a smile. How should he start? By saying that he knew the man had sinned? This converted Jew would not fall for that. No one in the village had discovered his secret; if they had, there would have been more than one accusation against him. Converted Jews were often a target. This Sinom must be clever. Joan regarded him for a few moments while he thought about it: What could this man be hiding? Why did he keep a light on at night in his house?

Joan stood up and went outside; neither the scribe nor the soldiers made a move to follow him. As he shut the door behind him, the curious onlookers who had gathered outside the building froze. Joan ignored them and spoke to the guard captain: “Is the family of the man inside here?”

The captain pointed to a woman and two children who were staring in their direction. There was something ...

“What does this man do for a living? What is his house like? What did he do when you told him to appear before the tribunal?”

“He’s a baker,” replied the soldier. “He has his shop on the ground floor of his house. What’s that like? It’s normal enough, it’s clean. But we didn’t see him to tell him to appear. We talked to his wife.”

“Wasn’t he in the bakery?”

“No.”

“Did you go at first light as I ordered?”

“Yes, Brother Joan.”

“Some nights he wakes me up ... ,” his neighbor had said. “He wakes me up.” A baker ... a baker has to get up before dawn. “Don’t you sleep, Sinom? If you have to get up before dawn ...” Joan thought. Joan looked across again at the convert’s family, who were standing slightly apart from the others. He walked round in circles for a moment or two, then plunged back inside the house. The scribe, soldiers, and Sinom had not moved from where he had left them.

“Take his clothes off,” he ordered the soldiers.

“I am circumcised. I’ve already admitted—”

“Take his clothes off!”

The soldiers turned to Sinom, but before they even laid their hands on him, the look the converted Jew gave Joan convinced him he was right.

“Now,” said Joan once Sinom was completely naked, “what do you have to say to me?”

The convert tried as best he could to maintain his composure.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

“I mean,” said Joan, lowering his voice and emphasizing each word as he said it, “that your face and neck are dirty, but from the chest down, your skin is white. I mean that your hands and wrists are dirty, but your forearms are spotless. I mean that your feet and ankles are dirty, but your legs are clean.”

“Dirty where I wear no clothes, clean where I do,” Sinom countered.

“Not even flour, and you a baker? Would you have me believe that the clothes a baker wears protect him completely from flour? Would you have me believe that you work in the same clothes you wear to protect yourself from the winter cold? Where is the flour on your arms? Today is Monday, Sinom. Did you keep God’s day holy?”

“Yes.”

Joan thumped the table and rose from his chair.

“But you also purified yourself according to your heretic rites!” he shouted, pointing straight at him.

“No!” groaned Sinom.