Cathedral of the Sea (52 page)

“IS SOMETHING WRONG,
my son?” he heard someone ask. Arnau turned and found himself face-to-face with the priest who a few minutes earlier had been addressing the congregation. “Oh, it’s you, Arnau,” the man said, recognizing him as one of the
bastaixos
who frequented Santa Maria. “Is something wrong?”

“Maria.”

The priest nodded sadly.

“Let us pray for her,” he said.

“No, Father,” said Arnau. “Not yet.”

“It’s only in God that you will find comfort, Arnau.”

Comfort? He had no hope of finding that anywhere. Arnau peered again toward his Virgin, but the incense still obscured his view.

“Let us pray,” insisted the priest.

“What were you saying about the Jews?” Arnau asked, still trying to avoid having to pray.

“Throughout Europe they are saying that the Jews are to blame for the plague.” Arnau looked at him inquisitively. “They say that in Geneva, at Chinon castle, some Jews have confessed that the plague was spread by one of their number from Savoy who poisoned wells with a potion prepared by rabbis.”

“Is that true?” Arnau asked him.

“No. The pope has absolved them, but people want someone to blame. Shall we pray now?”

“You do it for me, Father.”

Arnau left Santa Maria. In the square outside he found himself surrounded by a group of about twenty flagellants. “Repent!” they shouted at him, all the while whipping their own backs. “It’s the end of the world!” others spat in his face. Arnau could see blood running down their raw backs and legs, past the hair shirts wound round their waists. He surveyed their faces, their wild, staring eyes. He ran away from them down Calle de Montcada until he could no longer hear their cries ... but something here caught his attention too. The doors! Very few of the huge doorways to the palaces on Calle de Montcada displayed the white crosses that seemed to be everywhere in the rest of the city. Arnau found himself opposite the Puig family palace. There was no cross there either; all the windows were closed, and he could see no sign of life inside the building. Arnau willed the plague to find them wherever they had taken refuge, and for them to suffer as much as Maria had done. Then he hurried away even more quickly than he had from the flagellants.

When he reached the corner of Calle de Montcada and Carders, he again ran into a noisy crowd, this time armed with sticks, swords, and crossbows. “They’re all crazy,” Arnau told himself, stepping back to let them by. The homilies preached in every church of the city had been of little use. Clement the Sixth’s bull had not succeeded in calming people desperate to unleash their anger on someone. “To the Jewry!” he could hear them shouting. “Heretics! Murderers! Repent!” The flagellants were part of the crowd, still lashing their backs and spattering all those around them with blood.

Arnau fell in behind the mob, among a group who were following them silently. Several plague victims were with them. It seemed as though the whole of Barcelona had converged on the Jewry, surrounding the partly walled neighborhood on all four sides. Some took up position to the north, next to the bishop’s palace. Others were on the western side, by the old Roman walls; still others filled Calle del Bisbe, which bordered the Jewry to the east; the rest, including Arnau’s group, were to the south, in Calle de la Boqueria and outside Castell Nou, where the entrance to the Jewry stood. The noise was deafening. They wanted revenge, even though for the moment they were content to stay outside the gates, shaking their sticks and crossbows.

Arnau found some room for himself on the crowded steps of San Jaume church, the same one he and Joanet had been thrown out of all those years ago when they were searching for the Virgin they could call their mother. San Jaume rose close to the southern wall of the Jewry, and from its steps Arnau could see what was happening over the heads of the mob. The garrison of royal soldiers, headed by the city magistrate, was preparing to defend the Jewish quarter. Before launching any attack, a group of citizens went to talk with the magistrate beside the half-open gates of the Jewry and persuade him to withdraw his troops. The flagellants kept up their shouting and dancing around them, while the crowd continued to hurl threats against the Jews, whom they could not even see.

“They won’t withdraw,” Arnau heard a woman next to him say.

“The Jews are royal property; they depend entirely on the king,” another man agreed. “If the Jews die, the king will lose all the taxes he’s imposed on them...”

“And all the loans he’s had from those usurers.”

“Not just that,” said a third man. “If the Jewry is attacked, the king will lose even the furniture the Jews offer him and his court whenever they come to Barcelona.”

“The nobles will have to sleep on the floor,” someone shouted, to general laughter.

Arnau himself could not help smiling.

“The magistrate will defend the king’s interests,” the woman asserted.

She was proved right. The magistrate did not back down, and as soon as the two sides had finished talking, he shut himself inside the Jewry. That was the signal the mob had been waiting for. Before the gate was even shut, those closest to the walls rushed at it, while the others flung sticks, arrows, and stones over the walls. The assault had begun.

Arnau watched as the hate-filled crowd threw themselves at the gates and walls of the Jewry. No one was leading them; the only thing resembling orders was the cries of the flagellants who were still whipping themselves beneath the walls and urging the others to scale them and kill the heretics. When they did succeed in climbing over, many of them fell to the royal soldiers’ swords, but the Jewry was under siege from all four sides now, and many more overran the defenders and began to attack any Jews they could find.

Arnau stayed on the steps of San Jaume for two hours. The war cries reminded him of his days as a soldier: Bellaguarda and Castell-Rosselló. The faces of those who fell mingled with those of the men he himself had killed; the smell of blood took him back to Rosellón, to the lies that had led him to that absurd war, to Aledis and Maria ... As he recalled all this, he left his vantage point.

Leaving behind the massacre, Arnau walked down toward the sea, still thinking of Maria and what had forced him to seek a way out in fighting. All at once, his thoughts were interrupted. He was level with Castell de Regomir, a tower in the old Roman wall, when shouting close by forced him back to reality.

“Heretics!”

“Murderers!”

Arnau found himself confronted by a group of about twenty people filling the street. They were brandishing sticks and knives and shrieking at some others who must have been pressed up against a house wall. Why could they not simply mourn their dead? Arnau did not want to stop, and pushed his way through the enraged attackers. As he was forcing a path for himself, he glanced briefly at the spot they had surrounded: in a house doorway a bloody-faced Moorish slave was using his body to try to protect three children dressed in black with the yellow badge on their chests. Arnau suddenly found himself in between the Moor and his attackers. Silence fell, and the children’s terrified faces peeped out from behind their protector. Arnau glanced at them: how he regretted never having given Maria any children! A stone flew through the air toward them. It grazed Arnau, and when the Moor stepped into its path, hit him in the stomach. He doubled up with pain. A child’s tiny face peered directly at Arnau. His wife had loved children: she had not cared whether they were Christians, Moors, or Jews. She would gaze at them on the beach, in the streets of the city ... Her eyes would follow them tenderly, and then she would look back at him ...

“Move away! Get out of our way, will you?” Arnau heard a voice shout behind his back.

Arnau looked again at the pair of terrified eyes in front of him.

“What do you want with these children?” he growled.

Several men armed with knives confronted him.

“They’re Jews,” they said as one.

“And just for that you’re going to kill them? Aren’t their parents enough for you?”

“They’ve poisoned the wells,” one of the men said. “They killed Jesus. They kill Christian children for their heretical rites. Yes, they tear their hearts out ... they steal the sacred host.” Arnau was not listening. He could still smell the blood of the Jewry ... of Castell-Rosselló. He seized the man closest to him by the arm, punched him in the face, and took his knife. Then he confronted the others.

“Nobody is to harm any children!”

The attackers watched Arnau wielding the knife, drawing circles with it in the air. They saw the look of determination in his eyes.

“Nobody is going to harm any children,” he repeated. “Go and fight in the Jewry, against the soldiers, against grown men.”

“They will kill you,” warned the Moor, who now was behind him.

“Heretic!” the attackers cried.

“Jew!”

Arnau had been taught to attack first, to catch his enemy unawares, not to let him gain confidence, to frighten him. Shouting, “Sant Jordi!” Arnau launched himself at the nearest men. He plunged his dagger into the first one’s stomach, then whirled round, forcing the others to back off. His dagger sliced the chests of several more. From the ground, one of the wounded men stabbed him in the calf. Arnau looked down, seized him by the hair, pulled his head back, and slashed his throat. Blood came spurting out. Three men were lying on the ground; the others began to draw back. “Withdraw when you are outnumbered,” was another piece of advice Arnau remembered. He made as if to charge again, and the assailants fell over one another trying to get away. Without looking behind him, Arnau gestured to the Moor to gather the children to him, and when he could feel them around his legs, he backed away down toward the beach, still glaring at the armed group.

“They’re waiting for you in the Jewry,” he shouted at them, still shepherding the children away.

When he and the children reached the old gate of Castell de Regomir, they broke into a run. Without giving any explanation, he prevented them from heading back to the Jewry.

Where could he hide children? Arnau led them down to Santa Maria. He came to a halt outside the main entrance. From where they stood, they could see inside the unfinished church.

“You’re not planning to take the children into a Christian church, are you?” the slave asked, panting for breath.

“No,” replied Arnau. “But very close to it.”

“Why didn’t you let us return home?” asked the young girl, who was obviously the eldest of the three and had recovered more quickly than the others from their escape.

Arnau felt his calf. The blood was pouring out.

“Because your homes are being attacked,” he told them. “They blame you for the plague. They say you poisoned the wells.” None of them said anything. “I’m sorry,” he added.

The Moorish slave was the first to react: “We can’t stay here,” he said, forcing Arnau to look up from his wound. “Do as you think best, but hide the children.”

“What about you?” asked Arnau.

“I have to find out what has happened to their families. How will I meet you again?”

“You won’t,” said Arnau, realizing he would not have the chance to show him how to get to the Roman cemetery. “I’ll come and find you. Go down to the beach at midnight, by the new fish stall.” The slave nodded. As they were about to separate, Arnau added: “If in three nights you haven’t appeared, I’ll presume you are dead.”

The Moor nodded again, and gazed at Arnau with his big black eyes.

“Thank you,” he said, before running off toward the Jewry.

The smallest child tried to follow him, but Arnau held him back by the shoulders.

THAT FIRST NIGHT, the Moor did not appear at the meeting point. Arnau waited more than an hour for him after midnight, listening to the distant sounds of disturbances in the Jewry and staring at the red glow that filled the sky. While he was waiting, he had time to think about everything that had happened on this insane day. He had three Jewish children hidden under the high altar of Santa Maria, beneath his own Virgin. The entrance to the cemetery that he and Joanet had discovered long ago was still the same as the last time they had been there. The stairs to Plaza del Born had not yet been completed, so that it was easy to get in under the wooden platform at the entrance, although they had to wait crouching outside for almost an hour, until the guards who were patrolling around the church had left.

The children followed him along the dark tunnel without a word of protest until Arnau told them where they were and warned them not to touch anything if they did not want an unpleasant surprise. At that, the three of them burst into tears, and Arnau had no idea how to respond. Maria would have known how to calm them.

“They’re only dead people,” he shouted. “And they didn’t die of the plague. What do you prefer: to be here, alive among the dead, or outside so that you can be killed?” The sobbing stopped. “I’m going out again now to fetch a candle, water, and some food. All right? Is that all right?” he repeated when they said nothing.