Cathedral of the Sea (2 page)

 

B
ERNAT REALIZED NOBODY was looking in his direction, and glanced up at the clear blue sky. The weak late September sun played on the faces of his guests. He had put so much time and effort into preparing the feast that only bad weather could have spoiled it. He smiled up at the autumn sky, and when he looked down again, his smile broadened as he listened to the hum of happy voices in the cobbled courtyard that ran alongside the animal pens at the foot of his farmhouse.

His thirty or so guests were in high spirits: the grape harvest that year had been magnificent. All of them—men, women, and children—had worked from dawn to dusk harvesting the grapes, then treading them, without allowing themselves a single day’s rest.

It was only when the wine was ready to ferment in its barrels and the grape skins had been stored to distill their liquor during the slack days of winter that the peasant farmers could celebrate their September feast days. And it was then that Bernat Estanyol had chosen to be married.

Bernat surveyed his guests. Many of them had got up at dawn to walk the often great distances separating their properties from the Estanyol farmhouse. They were all enjoying themselves now, talking about the wedding, the harvest, or perhaps both things at once. Some of them, including a group where his Estanyol cousins and the Puig family were sitting, burst out laughing at a ribald comment directed toward him. Bernat felt himself blushing, and pretended to take no notice; he did not even want to think about what they might be laughing at. Scattered around the courtyard he could make out the Fontany family, the Vilas, the Joaniquets, and of course the bride’s relatives—the Esteve family.

Bernat looked out of the corner of his eye at his father-in-law. Pere Esteve was promenading his immense belly, smiling at some of those invited, saying a few words to others. Then he turned toward Bernat, who found himself forced to wave acknowledgment for the hundredth time that day. He looked for his in-laws and saw them at different tables among the throng. They had always been slightly wary of him, despite all his attempts to win them over.

He raised his eyes to the sky once more. The harvest and the weather seemed to be on his side. He glanced over at the farmhouse, and then again at the wedding party, and pursed his lips. All at once, in spite of the merry hubbub, he felt quite alone. It was barely a year since his father had died; his sister Guiamona, who had gone to live in Barcelona after her marriage, had not bothered to reply to the messages he had sent her, even though he longed to see her again. After his father’s death, she was the only direct family he had left ...

That death had made the Estanyol farmhouse the center of interest for the entire region: matchmakers and parents with unmarried daughters had paid endless visits. Prior to that, no one had paid them much attention, but the demise of the old man—whose rebellious nature had earned him the nickname of “Madcap Estanyol”—had rekindled the hopes of those who were anxious to see their daughter married off to the richest peasant farmer for miles around.

“You’re old enough now to get married,” they said, to encourage him. “Exactly how old are you?”

“Twenty-seven, I think,” he replied.

“That’s almost an age to have grandchildren,” they scolded him. “What are you doing all alone in your farmhouse? You need a wife.”

Bernat listened to them all patiently. He knew their advice would inevitably be followed by the mention of some candidate or other, a girl stronger than an ox and more beautiful than the most incandescent sunset.

None of this was new to him. Madcap Estanyol, whose wife had died giving birth to Guiamona, had tried to find him a wife, but all the suitable parents had fled the farmhouse cursing the demands he made regarding the dowry any future daughter-in-law was supposed to bring. Little by little, interest in Bernat had waned. The older he grew, the more extreme his father became: his rebelliousness bordered on real madness. Bernat concentrated on looking after his lands and his father; now all of a sudden at twenty-seven he found himself alone and besieged on all sides.

Yet the first visit Bernat received, when the old man had still to be properly laid to rest, was of a different nature: it was from the steward of his feudal lord, the lord of Navarcles. “How right you were, Father!” Bernat said to himself when he saw the steward and several soldiers ride up to his farm.

“As soon as I die,” the old man had repeated time and again to him in his brief moments of lucidity, “they’ll be here. You must show them my will.” With that, he pointed to the stone beneath which, carefully wrapped in leather, he had left the document containing the last will and testament of Madcap Estanyol.

“Why is that, Father?” Bernat had asked the first time he heard him.

“As you know,” the old man replied, “we lease these lands from our lord, but I am a widower, and if I had not drawn up my will, he would have the right to claim half of all our goods and livestock. That is known as the intestate right; there are many others that benefit the lords of Catalonia, and you must make sure you are aware of them all. They will be here, Bernat; they will come to take what is rightfully ours. It’s only by showing them my will that you can get rid of them.”

“What if they take it from me?” asked Bernat. “You know what they are like ...”

“Even if they did, it is registered in the official account books.”

The steward and his lord’s anger soon became common knowledge in the region. It served only to make the only son’s position look all the more attractive, as he had inherited all his father’s possessions.

Bernat could clearly recall the visit the man who was now his father-in-law had paid him before the grape harvest. Five shillings, a pallet, and a white linen smock—that was the dowry he was offering for his daughter Francesca.

“Why would I want a white linen smock?” Bernat asked, not even pausing as he forked the hay on the ground floor of his farmhouse.

“Look,” was Pere Esteve’s only reply.

Leaning on his pitchfork, Bernat looked in the direction Pere Esteve was pointing: the doorway of the stable. He let the pitchfork fall from his hands. Francesca was silhouetted against the light, dressed in the white linen smock ... Her whole body shone through, just waiting for him!

A shudder ran down Bernat’s spine. Pere Esteve smiled.

Bernat accepted his offer. There and then, in the stable, without even going up to the young girl, but never once taking his eyes off her. He realized it was a hasty decision, but so far he had not regretted it: there Francesca was in front of him now, young, beautiful, strong. His breathing quickened. That very night ... What might she be thinking? Did she feel as he did? Francesca was not sharing in the other women’s animated chatter: she sat quietly beside her mother, answering their jokes and laughter with forced smiles. Their looks met for a moment. She flushed and looked down, but Bernat could tell from the way her breast heaved that she was nervous too. Her white linen smock thrust itself once more into Bernat’s fantasies and desire.

“I congratulate you!” he heard a voice say behind him, and felt a hand clapping him on the shoulder. It was his father-in-law. “Look after her for me,” he added, following Bernat’s gaze and pointing to the girl, who did not know where to put herself. “If the life you have in store for her is as magnificent as this feast ... This is the most marvelous banquet I have ever seen. Not even the lord of Navarcles could lay on such a treat.”

In order to please his guests, Bernat had prepared forty-seven loaves of wheat bread: the peasants’ usual fare of barley, rye, or spelt was not good enough for him. Only the whitest bread, as white as his bride’s smock, was good enough for him! He had carried all the loaves to be baked at the Navarcles castle, calculating that, as usual, two loaves would be enough to pay for the privilege. When he saw this display of wheaten bread, the baker’s eyes opened wide, then narrowed to inscrutable slits. He demanded seven loaves in payment, and Bernat left the castle cursing the laws that prevented peasants like him from having their own bread ovens at home, or forges, or bridle and harness workshops ...

“You’re right there,” he told his father-in-law, banishing the unpleasant memory from his mind.

They both stared down the courtyard. Some of his bread might have been stolen, but there was still the wine his guests were drinking—the best, stored away by his father and left to age for several years—and the salt-roasted pig, the vegetable stew seasoned with chickens, and above all the four lambs, split down the middle and roasting slowly on the embers on their spits, oozing fat and giving off an irresistible smell.

All of a sudden the women started bustling about. The stew was ready, and the bowls the guests had brought were soon filled. Pere and Bernat sat at the only table laid in the courtyard. The women rushed to serve them, ignoring the four empty seats. The rest stood or sat on wooden benches and began to eat, still casting glances at the lambs roasting under the watchful eye of some of the cooks. Everyone was drinking wine, conversing, shouting, and laughing.

“Yes, a real feast,” Pere Esteve concluded, between mouthfuls.

Somebody proposed a toast to the bride and groom. Everybody joined in.

“Francesca!” shouted her father, raising his cup to her as she stood next to the roasting lambs.

Bernat stared hard at her, but again she hid her face.

“She’s feeling nervous,” Pere said in excuse, winking at him. “Francesca, daughter!” he shouted once more. “Come on, drink with us! Make the most of it now, because soon we’ll be leaving—almost all of us, that is.”

The guffaws following this remark only intimidated Francesca still further. She half raised a cup she had been given, but did not drink from it. Then she turned away from the laughter and went on supervising the cooking.

Pere Esteve clinked his cup against Bernat’s, spilling some of his wine. The other guests followed suit.

“I’m sure you’ll see to it she forgets her bashfulness,” Pere Esteve said out loud, for all to hear.

This led to more guffawing, this time accompanied by sly comments that Bernat preferred to ignore.

In this merry way, they set to work on large amounts of wine, pork, and chicken stew. Just as the women were withdrawing the lambs from the fire, a group of the guests suddenly fell silent and began to look over to the outskirts of the woods on the edge of Bernat’s land, beyond the plowed fields and the dip in the land that the Estanyols had used to plant the vines that provided them with such excellent wine.

Within a few seconds, the whole wedding party had fallen silent.

Three men on horseback had appeared among the trees. A larger number of men in uniform were walking behind them.

“What can he want here?” Pere Esteve muttered to himself.

Bernat followed the newcomers with his gaze as they drew closer across the fields. The guests began to whisper among themselves.

“I don’t understand,” Bernat said eventually, also in a low voice. “He never comes here: it is not on his way to the castle.”

“I don’t like the look of this at all,” said Pere Esteve.

The procession drew slowly closer. As the figures approached, the laughter and the remarks the horsemen were making took over from the merriment that had been in evidence in the courtyard; everyone could hear them. Bernat surveyed his guests: some of them could not bear to look, and stood there staring at the ground. He searched for Francesca, who was in the midst of a group of women. The lord of Navarcles’s powerful voice rang out. Bernat could feel anger rising inside him.

“Bernat! Bernat!” Pere Esteve hissed, clutching his arm. “What are you doing here? Run to greet him.”

Bernat leapt up and ran to receive his lord.

“Welcome to this your house,” he panted when he had reached the men on horseback.

Llorenç de Bellera, lord of Navarcles, pulled on his horse’s reins and came to a halt in front of Bernat.

“Are you Estanyol, son of the madman?” he asked disdainfully.

“Yes, my lord.”

“We were out hunting, and were surprised to hear your feast on the way back to our castle. What are you celebrating?”

Behind the horses, Bernat caught a glimpse of the soldiers, loaded down with their prey: rabbits, hares, some wild cocks. “It’s your visit that demands an explanation,” he would have liked to reply. “Or did the castle baker tell you about the white loaves I had baked?”

Even the horses, with their big round eyes focused on him, seemed to be awaiting his response.

“My marriage, your lordship.”

“And who are you marrying?”

“The daughter of Pere Esteve, my lord.”

Llorenç de Bellera sat silently, looking down at Bernat over his horse’s neck. The other mounts snorted impatiently.

“Well?” barked Llorenç de Bellera.

“My bride and I,” said Bernat, trying to hide his discomfort, “would be very honored if your lordship and his companions would care to join us.”

“We’re thirsty, Estanyol,” was all the lord of Navarcles deigned to reply.

The horses moved on without any need of prodding. Head down, Bernat walked alongside his lord’s horse back to the farmhouse. All the guests had gathered at the entrance to the courtyard to receive him: the women stared down at the ground, and all the men had removed their caps. A low murmur greeted Llorenç de Bellera when he halted before them.

“That’s enough,” he said as he dismounted. “Carry on with your banquet.”

The guests complied, turning round without a word. Several of the soldiers came up and took care of the horses. Bernat went with his new guests to the table where Pere Esteve and he had been seated. Their bowls and cups had disappeared.