Cathedral of the Sea

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.