Cathedral of the Sea (85 page)

“Who do you think you are?” Joan exclaimed, kicking the cloth away.

There was not much room inside the tower, scarcely three steps in any direction. With a single bound, Esteve was beside Joan. He slapped him hard twice, once on either cheek.

“The mistress says you are to cover your eyes.”

“I’m an inquisitor!”

This time, the blow from Esteve sent Joan crashing against the wall. He lay there at Esteve’s feet.

“Put the blindfold on.” Esteve lifted him with one hand. “Put it on,” he repeated when Joan was upright.

“Do you think that by using violence you can intimidate an inquisitor? You cannot imagine—”

Esteve did not let him finish. First he punched him hard in the face, and Joan went hurtling against the wall once again. Then Mar’s servant began to kick him—in the groin, the stomach, his chest, his face ...

Joan curled up in a ball to protect himself from more pain. Esteve picked him up with one hand.

“The mistress says you are to put it on.”

Joan was bleeding from the mouth. His legs gave way under him. When the servant let go, he tried to stay on his feet, but a stab of pain in his knee made him lurch forward and clutch Esteve’s body. The giant pushed him away.

“Put it on.”

The cloth was beside him. Joan realized he had wet himself and that his habit was sticking to his thighs.

He picked up the blindfold and put it on.

Joan heard the servant close the tower door and go down the staircase. Silence. On and on. Then he heard several footsteps on the stairs. Joan clambered up, gripping the wall. The door opened. They had brought some pieces of furniture with them; could they be chairs?

“I know you have sinned.” Mar was seated on a footstool. As she intoned the Inquisition’s charge, her voice reverberated around the room. Next to her, the little boy was watching the friar closely.

Joan said nothing.

“The Inquisition never blindfolds its... prisoners,” he complained finally. “Perhaps if I could see you face-to-face ...”

“That’s true,” he heard Mar reply. “You only blindfold their souls, their dignity, decency, their honor. I know you have sinned,” she said again.

“I won’t accept a trick like that.”

Mar signaled to Esteve. The servant went over to Joan and punched him hard in the stomach. Joan bent double, gasping for breath. By the time he had managed to straighten up again, there was complete silence in the room. He was panting so hard he could not even hear the others breathing. His legs and chest ached; his face felt raw. Nobody said a word. A knee to the outside of his thigh toppled him to the floor again.

Pain surged through him. He curled up into a ball once more.

Still silence.

A kick to his kidneys sent him arcing in the opposite direction.

“What do you want from me?” Joan screamed between the waves of pain.

Nobody answered. Finally the pain subsided, and it was then that Esteve picked him up again and hauled him in front of Mar.

Joan struggled to stay on his feet.

“What do you ... ?”

“I know you have sinned.”

How far would she go? Would she really beat him to death? Was she capable of killing him? Yes, he had sinned; but what authority did Mar have to judge him? He shuddered so violently he thought he was about to collapse again.

“You’ve already condemned me,” Joan managed to say. “Why judge me then?”

Silence. Darkness.

“Tell me! Why do you want to sit in judgment on me?”

“You are right,” he heard her say at length. “I’ve already condemned you, but remember it was you who confessed your guilt. On this very spot, it was you who robbed me of my virginity; this was where you had me raped time and again. Hang him and get rid of his body,” Mar told Esteve abruptly.

Mar’s footsteps began to descend the staircase. Joan felt Esteve tie his hands behind his back. He could not move; none of his muscles responded. The servant raised him in order to get him to stand on the stool where Mar had been sitting. Then Joan heard the noise of a rope being thrown up over one of the wooden beams in the ceiling. Esteve missed his aim, and the rope clattered to the floor. Joan wet himself again, and his bowels loosened. The noose was round his neck.

“I have sinned!” shouted Joan with what little strength he had left. At the foot of the stairs, Mar heard his anguished confession.

At last.

Mar walked back up to the top of the tower, followed by the little boy.

“Now I’ll listen to you,” she told Joan.

AT FIRST LIGHT, Mar was ready to leave for Barcelona. Dressed in her finest robes and wearing the few jewels she possessed, she allowed Esteve to lift her onto her mule. She urged the animal on.

“Take care of the house,” she told the servant as her mount began to set off. “And you, help your father.”

Esteve pushed Joan behind the mule.

“Keep your word, Friar,” he said.

With downcast eyes, Joan stumbled after Mar. What would happen now? Last night, when the blindfold had finally been removed, he had found himself face-to-face with her by the light of the torches hanging on the tower’s circular walls.

She had spat in his face.

“You don’t deserve any reprieve ... but Arnau might need you,” she said. “That’s the only thing preventing me killing you with my own bare hands here and now.”

The mule’s small, sharp hooves clopped their way along the track. Joan followed their rhythm, his eyes fixed on his feet. He had confessed everything to her: from his conversations with Eleonor to the hatred that had made him such a ferocious inquisitor. It was then that Mar had snatched off the blindfold and spat in his face.

The mule plodded on slowly and docilely toward Barcelona. To his left, Joan could smell the sea, accompanying him on his pilgrimage.

T
HE SUN WAS already beating down by the time Aledis left the Estanyer Inn and mingled with the people crossing Plaza de la Llana. Barcelona was wide awake. Some women, equipped with buckets, pots, and jars, were queueing at the Cadena well, next to the inn, while others were crowding round the butcher’s stall on the far side. They were all talking loudly and laughing. Aledis would have liked to have been out earlier, but donning her widow’s disguise—with the doubtful help of two girls who never ceased pestering her with questions about what was going to happen next, what was going to become of Francesca, if she were really going to be burned as a witch, as the noblemen had said—had taken her longer than she had anticipated. At least no one was staring at her as she walked down Calle Boria toward Plaza del Blat. Aledis felt odd: she had always attracted men’s attention and won scornful looks from women, but now, with the heat making her black robes stick to her, she looked all round and did not see anyone so much as giving her a second glance.

The noise from Plaza del Blat told her she could expect more people, more sun, more heat. She was perspiring heavily, and her breasts chafed against the coarse girdle wrapped tightly round them. Just before she reached Barcelona’s main market, Aledis turned right, heading for the shade of Calle de los Semolers. She walked up the street until she reached Plaza del Oli, where customers had come in search of the best olive oil or were buying bread at the stall. She crossed the square until she came to the San Joan fountain, where none of the women lined up gave her a second look either.

Turning to her left, Aledis soon arrived at the cathedral and the bishop’s palace. The day before they had thrown her out, calling her a witch. Would they recognize her now? The lad at the inn ... Aledis smiled while she searched for a side entrance; that lad was much more likely to have recognized her than any of the Inquisition’s soldiers.

“I’m looking for the jailer. I have a message for him,” she said in reply to the question from the guard at the door.

The soldier let her past, and showed her the way down to the dungeons.

As she advanced down the stairs, all light and colors gradually disappeared. At the foot, she found herself in an empty rectangular antechamber. It had a beaten earth floor and was lit by torches in the wall. At one end of the room, the jailer was resting his mounds of flesh on a stool; at the other was the beginning of a dark passageway.

The man studied her in silence as she approached him.

Aledis took a deep breath.

“I would like to see the old woman brought in yesterday,” she said, clinking her purse.

Without so much as moving or replying, the jailer spat close to her feet, and waved his hand dismissively. Aledis took a step back.

“No,” was all he said.

Aledis opened the purse. The man’s eyes greedily followed the gleam of coins that fell out on her hand. He had strict orders: no one was to enter the dungeons without express authorization by Nicolau Eimerich, and he had no wish to have to face the grand inquisitor. He knew what the grand inquisitor was like when he grew angry ... and the methods he used on those who disobeyed him. But those coins the woman was offering him ... And besides, hadn’t the official added that what the inquisitor really wanted to avoid was anyone having contact with the moneylender? And this woman did not want to see him; she was interested in the witch.

“All right,” he agreed.

NICOLAU THUMPED THE table.

“What can that idiot have thought he was doing?”

The young monk who had brought him the news started back. His brother, a wine merchant, had told him what had happened that same evening, while they were having supper in his house, with five children playing merrily in the background.

“It’s the best bit of business I’ve done in years,” his brother had told him. “Apparently Arnau’s brother the friar has given instructions to sell off commissions in order to raise money, and by God if he carries on this way, he’ll succeed: Arnau’s assistant is selling everything at half price.” At that, he raised his cup of wine and, still smiling, proposed a toast to Arnau.

When he heard the news, Nicolau fell silent. Then he flushed, and finally exploded. The young monk heard the orders he shouted to his captain:

“Go and fetch Brother Joan here! Tell the guards to find him!”

As the wine merchant’s brother hurriedly left the room, Nicolau shook his head. What had that impudent little friar imagined? That he could cheat the Inquisition by emptying his brother’s coffers? That fortune was destined for the Holy Office! All of it! Eimerich clenched his fists until his knuckles were white.

“Even if I have to see him on a bonfire!” he growled.