Century
PART ONE
Chained to the Land
1
BERNAT REALIZED NOBODY was looking in his direction, and glanced up at the clear blue sky. The weak late September sun played on the faces of his guests. He had put so much time and effort into preparing the feast that only bad weather could have spoiled it. He smiled up at the autumn sky, and when he looked down again, his smile broadened as he listened to the hum of happy voices in the cobbled courtyard that ran alongside the animal pens at the foot of his farmhouse.
His thirty or so guests were in high spirits: the grape harvest that year had been magnificent. All of them— men, women, and children—had worked from dawn to dusk harvesting the grapes, then treading them, without allowing themselves a single day’s rest.
It was only when the wine was ready to ferment in its barrels and the grape skins had been stored to distill their liquor during the slack days of winter that the peasant farmers could celebrate their September feast days. And it was then that Bernat Estanyol had chosen to be married.
Bernat surveyed his guests. Many of them had got up at dawn to walk the often great distances separating their properties from the Estanyol farmhouse. They were all enjoying themselves now, talking about the wedding, the harvest, or perhaps both things at once. Some of them, including a group where his Estanyol cousins and the Puig family were sitting, burst out laughing at a ribald comment directed toward him. Bernat felt himself blushing, and pretended to take no notice; he did not even want to think about what they might be laughing at. Scattered around the courtyard he could make out the Fontany family, the Vilas, the Joaniquets, and of course the bride’s relatives—the Esteve family.
Bernat looked out of the corner of his eye at his father-in-law. Pere Esteve was promenading his immense belly, smiling at some of those invited, saying a few words to others. Then he turned toward Bernat, who found himself forced to wave acknowledgment for the hundredth time that day. He looked for his in-laws and saw them at different tables among the throng. They had always been slightly wary of him, despite all his attempts to win them over.
He raised his eyes to the sky once more. The harvest and the weather seemed to be on his side. He glanced over at the farmhouse, and then again at the wedding party, and pursed his lips. All at once, in spite of the merry hubbub, he felt quite alone. It was barely a year since his father had died; his sister Guiamona, who had gone to live in Barcelona after her marriage, had not bothered to reply to the messages he had sent her, even though he longed to see her again. After his father’s death, she was the only direct family he had left ...
That death had made the Estanyol farmhouse the center of interest for the entire region: matchmakers and parents with unmarried daughters had paid endless visits. Prior to that, no one had paid them much attention, but the demise of the old man—whose rebellious nature had earned him the nickname of “Madcap Estanyol”—had rekindled the hopes of those who were anxious to see their daughter married off to the richest peasant farmer for miles around.
“You’re old enough now to get married,” they said, to encourage him. “Exactly how old are you?”
“Twenty-seven, I think,” he replied.
“That’s almost an age to have grandchildren,” they scolded him. “What are you doing all alone in your farmhouse? You need a wife.”
Bernat listened to them all patiently. He knew their advice would inevitably be followed by the mention of some candidate or other, a girl stronger than an ox and more beautiful than the most incandescent sunset.
None of this was new to him. Madcap Estanyol, whose wife had died giving birth to Guiamona, had tried to find him a wife, but all the suitable parents had fled the farmhouse cursing the demands he made regarding the dowry any future daughter-in-law was supposed to bring. Little by little, interest in Bernat had waned. The older he grew, the more extreme his father became: his rebelliousness bordered on real madness. Bernat concentrated on looking after his lands and his father; now all of a sudden at twenty-seven he found himself alone and besieged on all sides.
Yet the first visit Bernat received, when the old man had still to be properly laid to rest, was of a different nature: it was from the steward of his feudal lord, the lord of Navarcles. “How right you were, Father!” Bernat said to himself when he saw the steward and several soldiers ride up to his farm.
“As soon as I die,” the old man had repeated time and again to him in his brief moments of lucidity, “they’ll be here. You must show them my will.” With that, he pointed to the stone beneath which, carefully wrapped in leather, he had left the document containing the last will and testament of Madcap Estanyol.
“Why is that, Father?” Bernat had asked the first time he heard him.
“As you know,” the old man replied, “we lease these lands from our lord, but I am a widower, and if I had not drawn up my will, he would have the right to claim half of all our goods and livestock. That is known as the intestate right; there are many others that benefit the lords of Catalonia, and you must make sure you are aware of them all. They will be here, Bernat; they will come to take what is rightfully ours. It’s only by showing them my will that you can get rid of them.”
“What if they take it from me?” asked Bernat. “You know what they are like ...”
“Even if they did, it is registered in the official account books.”
The steward and his lord’s anger soon became common knowledge in the region. It served only to make the only son’s position look all the more attractive, as he had inherited all his father’s possessions.
Bernat could clearly recall the visit the man who was now his father-in-law had paid him before the grape harvest. Five shillings, a pallet, and a white linen smock—that was the dowry he was offering for his daughter Francesca.
“Why would I want a white linen smock?” Bernat asked, not even pausing as he forked the hay on the ground floor of his farmhouse.
“Look,” was Pere Esteve’s only reply.
Leaning on his pitchfork, Bernat looked in the direction Pere Esteve was pointing: the doorway of the stable.
