Cathedral of the Sea

“Decent women cover their breasts properly.” The two young women made as though to protest. “First your breasts,” Aledis said sternly, “then your smocks, and on top of them the kirtles. And you can thank the Lord that I bought you smocks and not hair shirts, because a little penance would not go amiss.”

The three women had to help wrap the girdles around one another.

“I thought you wanted us to seduce two noblemen,” Eulàlia complained while Aledis was pulling the girdle tight round her abundant breasts. “I don’t see how, dressed like this...”

“You leave that to me,” Aledis told her. “The kirtles are ... almost white, as a sign of virginity. Those two rogues will never miss the chance to sleep with virgins. You know nothing about men,” Aledis said as she finished dressing. “Don’t flirt or take liberties. Refuse all the time. Reject their advances as often as necessary.”

“What if we reject them so much they change their minds?”

Aledis raised her eyebrows at Teresa. “Poor little innocent,” she said, smiling. “All you two have to do is make sure they drink. The wine will do the rest. As long as you are with them they will have only one thought in minds. Believe me. And remember, Francesca has been arrested by the Church, and not by the city magistrate or the bailiff. Turn your conversation toward religious topics.”

The two girls looked at her in surprise. “Religious?” they exclaimed as one.

“I realize you don’t know much about them,” said Aledis, “but use your imagination. I think she’s accused of something to do with witchcraft ... When they threw me out of the palace, they shouted about me being a witch.”

A few hours later, the soldiers guarding the Trentaclaus gate allowed in a woman dressed in mourning clothes, with her hair coiled round her head. With her were her two daughters, dressed in near-white kirtles, with demurely plaited locks. They had common rope sandals on their feet, wore no makeup or perfume, and walked with downcast eyes behind their mother, staring at her ankles, as she had instructed them.

49

THE DUNGEON DOOR suddenly clanged open. This was not the usual time; the sun had not yet gone down sufficiently, and daylight was still struggling to find a way in through the bars of the tiny ground-level window, although the scene of misery inside seemed to make this an impossible endeavor amid all the dust and the foul vapors coming from the prisoners’ bodies. This was not the usual time for the door to open, and all the shadowy figures stirred. Arnau heard the sound of chains, which ceased when the jailer came in with the new prisoner. That meant he had not come in search of one of them. Another man ... or rather, another woman, Arnau thought, correcting himself when he saw the outline of the old woman in the doorway. What sin could that poor woman have committed?

The jailer pushed her inside the dungeon. She fell to the floor.

“Get up, witch!” his voice resonated round the entire dungeon. The old woman did not stir. The jailer gave the bundle at his feet two hefty kicks. The echoing sound of the two dull thuds seemed to last an eternity. “I said, get up!”

Arnau noticed how the other shadows tried to merge into the walls of the prison. The same shouts, the same gruff bark, the same voice. He had heard that voice often during the days he had been imprisoned, thundering from the far side of the door after one or another of the prisoners had been unchained. Then too he had noticed how the shadows shrank away from it, consumed with the fear of torture. First came the voice, then the shout, then a few moments later the heartrending cry of a body in pain.

“Get up, you old whore!”

The jailer kicked her again, but she still would not move. Eventually, puffing and blowing, he bent down, grasped her by the arm, and dragged her over to where he had been told to chain her up: as far as possible from the moneylender. The sound of keys and chains told them all what had happened to her. Before leaving the dungeon, the jailer came over to where Arnau was.

“Why?” he had asked when he had been ordered to chain the witch up as far away as possible from Arnau.

“This witch is the moneylender’s mother,” the officer of the Inquisition told him; he had heard it from one of the lord of Bellera’s men.

“Don’t think,” said the jailer when he was next to Arnau, “that you can pay the same to have your mother eat properly. Even if she is your mother, she is still a witch, and witches cost money.”

NOTHING HAD CHANGED: the farmhouse, with the tower to one side, still dominated the low rise. Joan looked up the hill and in his mind once more saw the assembled host, the nervous men with their drawn swords, the shouts of joy when he, on this very spot, succeeded in convincing Arnau to give up Mar in marriage. He had never got on well with the girl: what was he going to say to her now?

Joan looked up at the heavens and then, stooping and with downcast eyes, started to climb the gentle slope.