Cathedral of the Sea (23 page)

“Don’t be afraid,” Arnau said, trying to calm him.

He raised the lamp, and the flame rose higher. Where were they ... ? It was a cemetery! They were in a cemetery. A tiny cave that for some reason had survived beneath Santa Maria like an air bubble. The roof was so low they could not stand up. Arnau looked over at several huge amphorae. They looked just like the jars he was used to seeing in Grau’s workshop, but more rounded. Some of them were broken, showing the skeletons inside, but others were still intact: big clay vessels cut in half, stacked together, and sealed at the top.

Joan was still shaking: he was staring straight at a skeleton.

“It’s all right,” Arnau insisted, going over to him.

Joan drew away from him.

“What is—” Arnau started to ask.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Joan, interrupting him.

Without waiting for a reply, he plunged into the tunnel. Arnau followed, and when they reached the boards at the entrance, he blew out the lamp. There was no one in sight. He put the lantern back where he had found it, and they returned to Pere’s house.

“Don’t say a word of this to anyone,” he warned Joan on the way. “Agreed?”

Joan said nothing.

E
VER SINCE ARNAU had told him that the Virgin was his mother too, Joan ran to the church whenever he had a free moment. He would cling to the grille of the Jesus chapel, push his head in between them, and stare at the stone figure with the child on her shoulder and boat at her feet.

“One of these days you won’t be able to get your head out,” Father Albert said to him once.

Joan pulled back and smiled at him. The priest ruffled his hair and knelt down beside him.

“Do you love her?” he asked, pointing inside the chapel.

Joan hesitated.

“She’s my mother now,” he replied, more as a wish than a certainty.

Father Albert was choked with emotion. How much he could tell the little boy about Our Lady! He tried to speak, but the words would not come. He put his arm round Joan’s shoulders until he could safely speak again.

“Do you pray to her?” he asked when he had recovered.

“No. I just talk to her.” Father Albert looked inquisitively at him. “Well, I tell her what’s been happening to me.”

The priest looked at the Virgin.

“Carry on, my son, carry on,” he said, leaving him at the chapel.

IT
WAS NOT hard. Father Albert considered three or four possible candidates, and finally settled on a rich silversmith. During his last annual confession, the craftsman had seemed very contrite about several adulterous affairs he had been involved in.

“If you really are his mother,” Father Albert muttered, raising his eyes to the heavens, “you won’t hold this little subterfuge against me, will you?”

The silversmith could not say no.

“It’s only a small donation to the cathedral school,” the priest told him. “It will help a child, and God ... God will thank you for it.”

Now all that was left was to speak to Bernat. Father Albert went to find him.

“I’ve managed to get a place for Joanet at the cathedral school,” he told him as they walked along the beach near Pere’s house.

Bernat turned to look at him.

“I don’t have the money for that,” he said apologetically.

“It won’t cost you anything.”

“But I thought that schools ...”

“Yes, but those are the public ones in the city. For the cathedral school, it’s enough ...” What was the point explaining the details? “Well, I’ve seen to that.” The two men continued walking. “He will learn to read and write, first from hornbooks and then from psalms and prayers.” Why did Bernat not say anything? “Then when he is thirteen, he can start secondary school. There he will study Latin and the seven liberal arts: grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetics, geometry, music, and astronomy—”

“Father,” Bernat interrupted him, “Joanet helps out in the house, and because of that Pere does not charge me for his food. But if the boy goes to school ...”

“He’ll be fed at school.” Bernat looked at him again, and shook his head slowly, as though thinking it over. “Besides,” the priest went on, “I’ve already spoken to Pere, and he’s agreed you should pay the same as now.”

“You’ve done a lot for the boy.”

“Yes, do you mind?” Bernat shook his head, smiling. “Just imagine if one day Joanet went to university, to the main center in Lérida, or even to somewhere abroad, like Bologna or Paris ...”

Bernat burst out laughing.

“If I refused, you’d be really disappointed, wouldn’t you?” Father Albert nodded. “He’s not my son, Father,” Bernat added. “If he were, I wouldn’t allow one boy to work for the other, but it’s not going to cost me anything, so why not? He deserves it. And perhaps one day he will go to all those places you mentioned.”

“I’D PREFER TO be with the horses, like you,” Joanet told Arnau as they walked along the same part of the beach where Father Albert and Bernat had decided his future.

“But it’s very hard work, Joanet ... Joan. All I do is clean and polish, and just when I’ve got everything gleaming, a horse gets taken out and I have to start all over again. That’s when Tomás doesn’t come in shouting and throwing a bridle or harness at me for me to see to. On the first day he cuffed me around the ear as well, but my father came in, and ... you should have seen him! He had a pitchfork, and pinned Tomás against the wall with it. The tines were pressing into his chest, so he started stammering and begging for forgiveness.”

“That’s why I’d like to be with you.”

“Oh, no!” Arnau replied. “It’s true that he hasn’t laid a hand on me since then, but he always finds something wrong with what I do. He rubs dirt into things on purpose—I’ve seen him!”

“Why don’t you tell Jesús?”

“Father tells me not to. He says Jesus wouldn’t believe me, that Tomás is his friend, and so he would always take his side. Father says the baroness hates us and would use any argument against us. So you see, there you are learning lots of new things at school, while I have to put up with someone deliberately making things dirty and shouting at me.” They both fell silent for a while, kicking sand and staring out to sea. “Make the most of it, Joan,” Arnau said all of a sudden, repeating the words he had heard Bernat say.

Joan was soon making the most of his classes. He took to them from the day the priest who taught them congratulated him in front of the whole class. Joan felt an agreeable tingling sensation as the other boys stared at him. If only his mother were still alive! He would immediately run and sit on the crate in the garden and tell her exactly what the priest had said: “the best,” he had called him, and all the others, all of them, had looked at him! He had never been the best at anything before!

That evening, Joan walked home wreathed in a happy cloud. Pere and Mariona listened to him with contented smiles, asking him to repeat clearly phrases the boy thought he had already said, but had only gabbled incomprehensibly in his excitement. When Arnau and Bernat arrived, the three in the house looked toward the door. Joan made as if to rush over to them, but stopped when he caught sight of his brother’s face: it was obvious he had been crying. Bernat had a hand on his shoulder, and was holding him close.

“What ... ?” asked Mariona, going up to Arnau to give him a hug.

Bernat held her off with a gesture.

“We have to put up with it,” he said, to no one in particular.

Joan tried to catch his brother’s gaze, but he was looking at Mariona.

They put up with it. The groom Tomás did not dare cross Bernat, but he took it out on Arnau.

“He’s looking for a fight, son,” Bernat said to calm Arnau when he grew angry again. “We mustn’t fall into the trap.”

“But we can’t carry on like this all our lives,” Arnau complained another day.

“We won’t. I’ve heard Jesus warn him several times already. He’s not a good worker, and Jesus knows it. The horses in his care are wild: they kick and bite. It won’t be long before he’s in trouble, my son. It won’t be long.”

Bernat was right. The consequences of Tomás’s attitude were soon felt. The baroness was determined that Grau’s children should learn to ride. It was acceptable for Grau not to do so, but the two boys had to learn. So several times a week after lessons, Jesus drove Isabel and Margarida in the carriage, and the boys, the tutor, and Tomás the groom walked alongside, the latter leading a horse on a halter. They went to a small field outside the walls of the city, where each of them in turn had riding lessons from Jesus.

Jesus held a long rope attached to the horse’s bit in his right hand, and led the animal round in circles, while in the other he had a whip to control its movements. The young riders climbed onto their mounts one after another and circled round the head stableman, listening to his instructions and advice.

One day, from beside the carriage where he was supervising the team, Tomás stared fixedly at the horse’s mouth: all that was needed was a stronger pull than normal, just one. And there was always a moment when the horse took fright.

Genis Puig was astride the mount. Tomás looked at the boy’s face. Panic. He was terrified of horses and sat stiff as a board.

Jesus cracked the whip, urging the horse into a gallop. The horse reared its head and pulled on the rope.

When the leading rein came away from the halter and the horse ran free, Tomás could not stop himself from smiling. He quickly stifled it. It had been easy for him to sneak into the harness room and cut the rope until it hung by a thread.

Isabel and Margarida gave strangled cries. Jesus dropped the leading rein and tried to stop the horse. It was no use.

When he saw the rope fall away, Genis started to shriek, and clung to the horse’s neck. This meant that his feet and legs dug into his mount’s withers, which spurred it into a full gallop. It headed straight for the city gate, with the boy still hanging on desperately. When the horse leapt over a small mound, he was thrown off into the air, then rolled on the ground until he came to rest in a clump of bushes.

Bernat was in the stables. The first he heard was the thunder of horses’ hooves on the cobblestones, and then the baroness shouting. Instead of walking in quietly as they usually did, the horses clattered across the yard. Bernat went out to look, and came across Tomás leading in the horse. It was in a lather, panting heavily through its nostrils.

“What... ?” Bernat started to ask.

“The baroness wants to see your son,” Tomás shouted, hitting the animal’s side.

The baroness’s shrieks could still be heard outside the stables. Bernat looked pityingly at the horse, which was pawing the ground.

“The mistress wants to see you,” Tomás shouted again as Arnau came out of the harness room.

Arnau looked at his father, who merely shrugged.

They went out into the yard. The baroness was livid, waving the whip she always took when she went riding, and shouting at Jesus, the tutor, and all the slaves who had come out to see what was going on. Margarida and Josep were still hanging behind. Genis stood next to the baroness, dirty, bleeding, and with torn clothes. As soon as Arnau and Bernat appeared, the baroness strode toward the boy and slashed his face with her whip. Arnau lifted his hand to his mouth and cheek. Bernat darted forward, but Jesus stepped in between them.