Cathedral of the Sea

Guillem knelt by the wall. It was the second stone from the right. He began to pull at it. He had never confessed to Arnau about that first operation he had done behind his back, but in his name. The stone would not budge. “Don’t worry,” he remembered Hasdai telling Arnau once when he had mentioned the Jew, “I have instructions for the deposit to remain as it is. Don’t worry about it.” When Arnau turned to look at them, Hasdai stared at Guillem, who limited himself to shrugging and sighing. The stone began to move. No. Arnau would never have used money that came from the sale of slaves. The stone came away, and behind it Guillem soon found the document, carefully wrapped in a cloth. He did not bother reading it, because he remembered exactly what it said. He pushed the stone back and went back to the window. He could hear nothing unusual outside, so he slipped out again, and left Arnau’s countinghouse.

55

THE SOLDIERS HAD to come into the dungeon to get him. Two of rhem lifted him under the arms and dragged him out, while Arnau JL struggled to stand. His ankles banged against the stairs up to the palace; he did not have the strength to make his own way. He did not even notice the monks and priests peering at him as he was led to face Nicolau again. Arnau had not been able to sleep for a moment: how could Joan have denounced him?

When he had been thrown back into the dungeon the previous evening, Arnau had wept, cried out, and flung himself at the wall. Why Joan? And if Joan had denounced him, what role was Aledis playing in all this? And the old woman in the dungeon with him? Aledis had reason to hate him: he had abandoned her and then refused to receive her. Could she be in league with Joan? Had they really gone to fetch Mar? If that were so, why hadn’t she visited him? Was it so hard to bribe a simple jailer?

Francesca listened to him weeping and crying out. When she heard her son in such pain, her body shrank still further. She would have loved to look at him and respond, to console him even if she had to lie. “You won’t be able to stand it,” she had warned Aledis. But what about her? Would she be able to bear this situation for much longer? Arnau went on howling his anguish to the world, and Francesca crept closer to the dank walls of the prison.

THE DOORS TO the chamber opened and Arnau was pushed in. The members of the tribunal were all assembled. The soldiers dragged him to the center of the room and let him go: Arnau fell to his knees with his legs splayed out beneath him. He heard Nicolau’s voice breaking the silence, but could not understand a word of what he was saying. What did he care what this friar could do to him, when his own brother had already passed sentence on him? He had no one. He had nothing.

“Make no mistake,” the bailiff had told him when he tried to buy him off with a small fortune, “you don’t have any money anymore.” Money! Money had been the reason the king had married him to Eleonor ; money was behind his wife’s accusations; it was money that had led to his imprisonment. Could it have been money that led Joan to... ?”

“Bring in the mother!”

The barked command stirred a response in Arnau’s befuddled brain.

MAR AND ALEDIS, with Joan a few paces away, were waiting outside the bishop’s palace in Plaza Nova. “The infante will see my master this evening,” was all that one of Guillem’s slaves had told them the day before. This morning, at first light, the same slave had appeared and told them his master wanted them to go to the Plaza Nova.

So the three of them waited, wondering what reasons there could be for Guillem to call them there like that.

ARNAU HEARD THE doors opening behind him. Then he heard the soldiers come back in and approach the center of the chamber close by him. After that, they marched back to stand guard at the doors.

He could sense her presence. He saw her bare, cracked feet, filthy and bleeding. Nicolau and the bishop smiled when they saw Arnau apparently fascinated by his mother’s feet. He turned to look at her properly. Although he was on his knees and she was standing, she was so shrunken that she was only a hand taller than he. The time she had spent in the dungeons had left its mark: her sparse gray hair was matted and stiff; her profile as she stared at the tribunal bench was a mass of slack skin. The eye in the side of her face he could see was sunken so deep into what looked like purple, mottled flesh that Arnau could scarcely make it out.

“Francesca Esteve,” said Nicolau, “do you swear on the four gospels?”

The old woman’s strong, firm voice took everyone by surprise. “I swear,” she said, “but you are wrong; my name is not Francesca Esteve.”

“What is it then?” asked Nicolau.

“My name is Francesca, but not Esteve. It’s Ribes. Francesca Ribes,” she said, raising her voice.

“Do we have to remind you that you are under oath?” the bishop said.

“No. On my oath, I am telling the truth. My name is Francesca Ribes.”