Cathedral of the Sea (82 page)

The noise all around her brought Aledis back to reality. She had been so caught up in her own thoughts, she had hardly realized she had walked all the way down Calle del Bisbe, then Calle Sederes, and had finally entered Plaza del Blat. The fine, sunny spring day had brought even more people than usual into the square. Alongside the grain sellers were dozens of curious onlookers. Aledis was standing under the old gateway to the city; she turned when the smell of freshly baked bread from the barrow on her left reached her nostrils. The baker glanced at her suspiciously, and Aledis remembered how she looked. She did not have a single coin on her. She swallowed hard and walked away, avoiding catching the baker’s gaze.

Twenty-five years; it had been twenty-five years since she had last been in these streets, seen these people, and breathed the air of Barcelona. Could the Pia Almoina still exist? They had been given nothing to eat that morning in the castle, and her stomach was reminding her of the fact. She walked back the way she had come, up toward the cathedral and the bishop’s palace. Her mouth began to water as she approached the line of beggars queueing for food outside the Pia Almoina. How often in her youth had she passed this very same spot, feeling nothing but pity for these hungry people who openly showed to anyone who passed by their need for public charity?

Aledis joined the queue. She lowered her head so that her hair would cover her face, and shuffled along with the rest of them toward the food. She concealed her face still further when she reached the novice, and stretched out her hands. Why did she have to ask for charity? She had a good house, and had saved enough money to live comfortably for the rest of her days. Men still found her desirable and ... a crust of hard bean bread, a cup of wine, and a bowl of soup. She ate everything, with as much enjoyment as all the poor beggars around her.

When she had finished, she lifted her gaze for the first time. She looked at the throng of beggars, cripples, and old people sitting at the tables. They all kept an eye on their neighbors and clutched their hunk of bread and bowl of soup tightly. What was the reason for her being there? Why had they kept Francesca in the bishop’s palace? Aledis got up. Her attention was caught by a young blond woman dressed in a scarlet robe, walking toward the cathedral. A noblewoman ... out on her own? But if she were not a noble, dressed like that she could only be a ... Teresa! Aledis ran over to her.

“We took turns outside the castle to find out what was happening to you,” Teresa explained after they had embraced. “It wasn’t hard convincing the soldiers at the gate to tell us.” The young woman winked one of her beautiful blue eyes. “When you were taken out and the soldiers told us you were headed for Barcelona, we had to find some way of getting here. That’s what took us so long. Where’s Francesca?”

“She’s under arrest in the bishop’s palace.”

“For what reason?”

Aledis shrugged. When the two of them had been split up, and the soldiers told her to get out of the palace, she had tried to hear what was going on. “Take the old woman to the dungeons,” was all she heard. Nobody had answered her questions, and they had pushed her out of the way. Her insistence on knowing why Francesca had been arrested led a young friar whose sleeve she was tugging to call the guard. She was thrown out of the palace to shouts of “Witch!”

“How many of you came?”

“Eulàlia and me.”

A glittering green dress came running toward them.

“Did you bring money?”

“Of course...”

“What about Francesca?” asked Eulàlia when she caught up with the other two.

“She’s been arrested,” Aledis told her. Eulàlia wanted to know why, but Aledis silenced her with a gesture. “I don’t know why.”

Aledis studied the two young women ... What mightn’t they discover? “I don’t know why she’s been arrested,” she repeated, “but we’ll find out, won’t we, girls?”

They both smiled mischievously at her.

JOAN DRAGGED THE muddy folds of his habit all through Barcelona. His brother had asked him to find Mar. How could he appear before her? After leaving Arnau, he had tried to make a pact with Eimerich. Instead of that, like one of the hapless villains he was used to judging as inquisitor, he had condemned himself with his own words, and had served only to make his brother seem more guilty. What could Eleonor have accused him of? For a few moments he thought of going to see his sister-in-law, but when he remembered the smile she had given him in Felip de Ponts’s house, he knew that would be no use. If she had denounced her own husband, what was she going to say to him?

Joan walked down Calle de la Mar to Santa Maria. Arnau’s church. Joan came to a halt and surveyed it. Although still covered in wooden scaffolding where masons came and went ceaselessly, the proud outlines of Santa Maria were plain to see. All the external walls and their buttresses had been completed. So had the apse and two of the four vaults in the main nave. The tracery of the third vault, on the end of whose keystone the king had paid for the image of his father, King Alfonso, on horseback to be sculpted, was already rising in a perfect arch, supported by a complicated network of scaffolding until the keystone could be lowered into place and the arch could soar free. All that was left to build were the two remaining vaults, and then Santa Maria’s new roof would be complete.

How could one not fall in love with a church like this? Joan recalled Father Albert and the first time he and Arnau had set foot in Santa Maria. He had not even known how to pray! Years later, while he was learning to pray, to read and to write, his brother was hauling blocks of stone to this very spot. Joan remembered the bloody wounds on his brother’s back those first days of work as a
bastaix
... and yet he had smiled! He watched the master builders busy with the jambs and archivolts on the main doorway, while other experts worked on the statues, the doorways, the tracery that was different around each door, the forged iron grilles and the gargoyles with all their vast array of allegorical figures, the capitals of the columns. But what most caught his attention were the stained-glass windows, those works of art intended to filter the magical light of the Mediterranean so that it could play, hour after hour, almost minute by minute, with the shapes and colors inside the church.

The composition of the impressive rose window above the main doorway was already hinted at: in the center lay a small rondel, from the edge of which, like whimsical arrows or a carefully sculpted sunstone, grew the stone mullions that divided up the shapes of the main window. Beyond these, the tracery gave way to a row of pointed trefoils, with above them another row of quatrefoil lights that ended in rounded curves. It was in between all this stone tracery, as elsewhere in the narrow lights of the façade, that the pieces of leaded stained glass would eventually be placed: for now, though, the rose window looked like a huge spider’s web made of finely carved stone, just waiting for the master glaziers to fill in the gaps.

“They still have a lot to do,” thought Joan as he watched the hundred or so workmen who carried the hopes and illusions of a whole people on their backs. At that moment, a
bastaix
arrived carrying another huge block. Sweat poured down from his forehead to his calves; all his muscles stood out tautly as they rocked to the rhythm of each step that brought him closer to the church. But he was smiling, just as Joan’s brother had all those years ago. Joan could not take his eyes off him. The masons stopped their work up on the scaffolding to watch this fresh load of stones arriving. Another
bastaix
appeared after the first one, then another, and still another, all of them bent double under the weight. The sound of chisels on stone ceased, as the masons paid homage to these humble workers of La Ribera. For a few moments the whole of Santa Maria lay in enchanted silence. Then a mason broke the spell with his shout of encouragement from high on the scaffolding. His cry pierced the air, bounced off the stones, and entered the hearts of everyone there.

“Keep going!” Joan whispered, adding his voice to the clamor that had arisen. The
bastaixos
were smiling. As each of them deposited his stone on the ground, the shouts grew louder. Afterward, they were handed water-skins, which they raised high over their heads for the contents to run off their faces before they drank. Joan saw himself running along the beach to offer the
bastaixos
Bernat’s waterskin. Then he raised his eyes to the heavens. He had to go and find her: if that was the penitence the Lord was imposing on him, he would seek out Mar and confess the truth. He went round Santa Maria to Plaza del Born, then Pla d’en Llull and Santa Clara convent, leaving Barcelona by the San Daniel gate.

IT WAS NOT difficult for Aledis to find the lord of Bellera and Genis Puig. Apart from the corn exchange, where visiting merchants stayed, Barcelona had only five inns. She ordered Teresa and Eulàlia to hide on the way out to Montjuic hill until she came to fetch them. Aledis was silent as she watched them walk away, fond memories flooding her mind ...

When she could no longer see the bright gleam of their robes, she began her search. She went first to the Del Bou Inn, close by the bishop’s palace and Plaza Nova. When she appeared at the kitchen door to the rear of the inn, the scullion boy rudely shooed her away when she asked for the lord of Bellera. At the De la Massa Inn in Portaferrissa, also near the bishop’s palace, a woman kneading bread told her no two such gentlemen were staying there. So Aledis headed for the Estanyer Inn, on Plaza de la Llana. There another young lad brazenly stared her up and down.

“Who wants to know about the lord of Bellera?” he asked.

“My mistress,” replied Aledis. “She has been following him from Navarcles.”

The lad was tall and thin as a rake. He stared at Aledis’s breasts, then reached out his right hand and fondled one.

“What interest does your mistress have in this nobleman?”

Aledis did not move away, but stifled a smile. “It’s not for me to know.” The lad began to rub her breasts more vigorously. Aledis stepped closer to him and brushed the top of his thigh. He tensed. “But,” Aledis said, drawling her words, “if they are staying here, I may have to spend the night sleeping in the garden whilst my mistress...” By now she was stroking his groin.

“This morning,” the lad stammered, “two gentlemen came asking for somewhere to stay.”

This time, Aledis smiled openly. For a moment she thought of leaving the boy, but then ... why not? It had been so long since she had felt a young, clumsy body on top of her, someone driven only by passion ...

She pushed him into a small hut. The first time, the lad did not even have time to remove his hose, but after that Aledis was able to take advantage of every thrust of this casual object of her desire.

When Aledis stood up to get dressed again, the youth was lying on his back on the ground. He was out of breath, and staring blindly up at the rafters on the roof of the hut.

“If you see me again,” Aledis told him, “whatever happens, remember you don’t know me!”

She had to repeat this twice before she could secure his promise.