Cathedral of the Sea (22 page)

“What do you want?” the man growled. He was barefoot, and the only clothing he was wearing was a threadbare shirt that came down to his knees.

“My name is Bernat Estanyol, and this is my son,” he said, grasping Arnau by the shoulder and pushing him forward. “He’s a friend of your son Joa—”

“I don’t have a son,” Pone protested, making as though to shut the door in their faces.

“But you do have a wife,” said Bernat, pushing the door open despite Ponc’s efforts. “Well ... ,” he explained to the coppersmith, “you did have one. She has died.”

Pone showed no reaction.

“So what?” he said, with an almost imperceptible shrug of his shoulders.

“Joanet is inside the hut with her.” Bernat tried to make his voice sound as threatening as he could. “He can’t get out.”

“That’s where that bastard should have spent his entire life.”

Squeezing Arnau’s shoulder tight, Bernat looked steadily at the other man. Arnau was frightened again, but when Pone looked down at him, he stood defiantly straight.

“What are you going to do?” Bernat insisted.

“Nothing,” the coppersmith replied. “Tomorrow, when they knock the hut down, the boy will get out.”

“You can’t leave a child all night in—”

“I can do what I like in my own house.”

“I’ll go and tell the magistrate,” Bernat said, knowing it was an empty threat.

Ponc’s eyes narrowed. Without another word, he disappeared inside, leaving the door open. Bernat and Arnau waited. He finally came back carrying a rope, which he handed directly to Arnau.

“Get him out of there,” he ordered the boy, “and tell him that now his mother is dead I don’t ever want to see him here again.”

“How ... ?” Bernat began to ask.

“The same way he has been getting in there all these years,” Pone said. “By climbing over the wall. You are not going through my house.”

“What about his mother?” Bernat asked before he could shut the door again.

“The king handed me the mother with orders that I should not kill her. Now that she is dead, I’ll give her back to the king,” Pone quickly replied. “I paid a lot of money as surety, and by God, I have no intention of forfeiting it for a whore like her.”

ONLY FATHER ALBERT, who already knew Joanet’s story, and old Pere and his wife, whom Bernat had no choice but to tell, ever found out about the boy’s terrible misfortune. All three of them paid him special attention, but he still refused to talk. Whereas before he had constantly been on the move, now he walked slowly and deliberately, as if he were carrying an unbearable weight on his shoulders.

“Time is a great healer,” Bernat said to Arnau one morning. “We have to wait and offer him our love and help.”

Yet Joanet continued to say nothing. His only reaction was when he burst into tears each night. Bernat and Arnau lay quietly on their mattress, until it seemed the poor boy ran out of energy and was overcome by a fitful sleep.

“Joanet,” Bernat heard his son call out to him one night. “Joanet!”

There was no answer.

“If you like, I can ask the Virgin Mary to be your mother too.”

“Well said, son!” thought Bernat. He had not wanted to suggest it, because the Virgin was Arnau’s secret. It was up to him to decide if he wanted to share it.

Now he had done so, but Joanet had made no reply. The room remained completely silent.

“Joanet?” Arnau insisted.

“That was what my mother called me.” These were the first words he had spoken in days. Bernat lay on his mattress without moving. “She’s no longer here. Now my name is Joan.”

“As you like. Did you hear what I said to you about the Virgin, Joanet ... Joan?”

“But your mother doesn’t speak to you—mine did.”

“Tell him about the birds,” Bernat whispered.

“Well, I can see the Virgin, and you could never see your mother.” Joan was silent again.

“How do you know she listens?” he asked finally. “She is only a stone figure, and stone figures don’t listen.”

Bernat held his breath.

“If it’s true they don’t listen,” Arnau responded, “why does everyone talk to them? Even Father Albert. You’ve seen him. Do you think Father Albert is making a mistake?”

“She isn’t Father Albert’s mother,” the other boy insisted. “He’s already told me he has one. How will I know if the Virgin wants to be my mother if she doesn’t speak to me?”

“She’ll tell you at night when you sleep, and through the birds.”

“The birds?”

“Well,” said Arnau hesitantly. The truth was he had never really understood what the birds were meant to do, but he had never dared tell his father so. “That’s more complicated. My ... our father will explain it to you.”

Bernat felt a lump in his throat. Silence filled the room again, until Joan spoke once more: “Arnau, could we go right now and ask the Virgin?”

“Now?”

“Yes, now, my son, now. He needs it,” thought Bernat.

“Please.”

“You know it’s forbidden to go into the church at night. Father Albert—”

“We won’t make any noise. Nobody will find out. Please!”

Arnau gave in. The two boys stole out of the house and ran the short distance to Santa Maria de la Mar.

Bernat curled up on the mattress. What could possibly happen to them? Everyone in the church loved them.

Moonlight played over the outlines of the scaffolding, the half-built walls, the buttresses, arches, and apses ... Santa Maria lay silent, with only the occasional flames from bonfires showing there were watchmen in the vicinity. Arnau and Joan sneaked round the church to Calle del Born; the main entrance to the church was closed, and the side by the Las Moreres cemetery, where much of the building material was kept, was the most closely guarded. But on the side where the new work was being carried out there was only one fire. It was not hard to get in: the walls and buttresses led down from the apse to the Born doorway, where a wooden board marked the site of the new steps into the church. The two boys walked over the chalk lines drawn by Master Montagut, showing the exact position for the new door and steps, and entered Santa Maria. They headed silently toward the Jesus chapel in the ambulatory. There, behind strong and wonderfully wrought-iron railings, they found the Virgin, lit as ever by the candles that the bastaixos made sure never went out.

They crossed themselves: “That’s what you should always do when you come into church,” Father Albert had told them. They grasped the iron bars of the chapel.

“He wants you to be his mother,” Arnau said silently to the Virgin. “His mother has died, and I don’t mind sharing you.”

Clinging to the bars, Joan stared in turn at the Virgin and at Arnau.

“What?” Arnau asked.

“Be quiet!”

“Father says he must have suffered a lot. His mother was imprisoned, you see. She could only reach her arm out through a window, and he couldn’t see her. Not until she had died, but even then he says he didn’t really look at her because she had forbidden him to.”

The smoke rising from the pure beeswax candles in the rack below the statue clouded Arnau’s sight once more, and the lips of the Virgin smiled at him.

“She will be your mother,” he declared to Joan.

“How do you know, if you say she replies through—”

“I know, and that’s all there is to it,” Arnau cut in.

“What if I asked her—”

“No,” said Arnau, interrupting him again.

Joan stared at the stone figure: how he wanted to be able to talk to her the way Arnau did! Why did she listen to his brother and not to him? How could Arnau know ... ? Joan was promising himself that one day he would be worthy of her talking to him, when they heard a noise.

“Shhh!” Arnau whispered, looking toward the empty Las Moreres doorway.

“Who goes there?” A lantern appeared in the doorway.

Arnau started to run toward the Calle del Born, where they had got into the church, but Joan stood rooted to the spot, staring at the light that was now coming along the ambulatory.

“Let’s go!” said Arnau, tugging at him.

When they looked out at the Calle del Born, they saw more lanterns heading toward them. Arnau looked back; there were more lights inside the church too.

There was no way out. The watchmen were talking and shouting to one another. What could the boys do? The wooden floor! He pushed Joan down. The planks did not quite reach the wall. He pushed Joan down again, until the two of them were in the church foundations. The lights reached the platform above them. The footsteps on the wooden boards echoed in Arnau’s ears, and the watchmen’s voices hid the sound of his wildly beating heart.

They waited while the watchmen searched the building. It took them a lifetime! Arnau peered upward, trying to work out what was going on. Each time he saw light filtering through the boards, he crouched down to hide still farther in.

In the end the watchmen completed their search. Two of them stood on the wooden boards and for a few moments shone their lanterns all round. How could they possibly not hear the beating of his or Joan’s heart? The men moved away. Arnau turned his head to look at the spot where his brother had been crouching. One of the watchmen placed a lamp by the wooden planks; the other one was already walking away. Joan was not there! Where could he have got to? Arnau went over to where the church foundations joined the wooden floor. There was a hole, a small underground passage through the foundations of the church.

When Arnau had pushed him down into the foundations, Joan had crawled under the wooden floor. He found nothing in his way, so he went on crawling along the passageway, which angled slowly down toward the main altar. Arnau had encouraged him onward, whispering, “Be quiet,” several times. The noise of his body scraping against the sides of the tunnel prevented him from hearing anything more, but he was sure Arnau was right behind him: he could hear him clambering under the floor. It was only once the tunnel broadened out, allowing him to turn round and get to his knees, that Joan realized he was all alone. Where was he? It was completely dark.

“Arnau?” he called out.

His voice echoed round him. It was ... it was like a cave. Beneath the church!

He called out again and again. Quietly at first, then much louder, but he was frightened by the sound of his own shouts. He could try to get back, but where was the mouth of the tunnel? Joan stretched out his arms, but could feel nothing: he had crawled too far.

“Arnau!” he shouted again.

Nothing. He began to cry. What might he find in the cave? Monsters? What if this was hell? He was underneath a church; didn’t they say that hell was down there somewhere? What if the Devil appeared?

Arnau meanwhile was crawling down the passage. That was the only place Joan could have gone. He would never have climbed back out from under the floor. Arnau struggled on for a few yards, then called out once more. No one would hear outside the tunnel. No reply. He crawled on.

“Joanet!” he shouted, then corrected himself. “Joan!”

“Here,” he heard the reply.

“Where is here?”

“At the end of the tunnel.”

“Are you all right?”

Joan stopped shaking. “Yes.”

“Come back then.”

“I can’t. This is like a cave, and I can’t find the way back.”

“Feel the walls until you ... No!” Arnau changed his mind. “Don’t do that, Joan, do you hear me? There might be other tunnels. If only I could reach you ... Can you see anything, Joan?”

“No,” the other boy replied.

Arnau could crawl on until he found him, but what if he got lost too? Why was there a cave down there? Ah, now he had an idea! He needed light. If they had a lamp, they could find their way back.

“Wait where you are! Do you hear me, Joan? Stay still, all right? Can you hear me?”

“Yes, I can. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to get a lamp and come back. Stay where you are and don’t move, promise?”

“Yes ... ,” said Joan reluctantly.

“Think that you are underneath your mother, the Virgin.” Arnau did not hear any reply. “Did you hear me, Joan?”

Of course he heard him. He had said, “Your mother.” Arnau could hear her, even if he could not. But he had not let him talk to her. What if Arnau did not want to share his mother, and had deliberately shut him up down there, in hell?

“Joan?” Arnau insisted.

“What is it?”

“Wait for me, and don’t move.”

With difficulty, Arnau managed to crawl back until he was under the boards by the Calle del Born entrance. He quickly snatched the lamp that the watchman had left there, then disappeared into the tunnel again.

Joan could see the light approaching. When the walls opened out, Arnau took his hand away from the lantern to give more light. His brother was kneeling a couple of yards from the mouth of the passageway.