“Does that mean you ban birthmarks?” responded the first baron, the worse for wear from drink. Again, everyone burst out laughing, while Llorenc de Bellera gave a forced smile.
IT HAPPENED IN the first days of August. Arnau was sleeping in his cradle in the shade of a fig tree at the farmhouse entrance. His mother was going to and fro between the vegetable garden and the animal pens, while his father, keeping one eye all the time on the wooden cot, was busy leading the oxen time and again over the ears of corn to crush the precious grain that would feed them through the year.
They did not hear them arrive. Three horsemen galloped into the yard: Llorenc de Bellera’s steward and two others, all three armed and mounted on powerful warhorses. Bernat noticed that the horses were not wearing battle armor: they had probably not thought this necessary to intimidate a simple peasant. The steward stayed in the background, while the other two men slowed to a walk, spurring their horses on to where Bernat was standing. Trained for battle, the two horses came straight at him. Bernat backed off, then stumbled and fell to the ground, almost underneath their huge hooves. It was only then that the horsemen reined in their mounts.
“Your lord, Llorenc de Bellera,” shouted the steward, “is calling for your wife to come and breast-feed Don Jaume, the son of your lady, Dona Caterina.” Bernat tried to scramble to his feet, but one of the riders urged his horse on again. The steward addressed Francesca in the distance. “Get your son and come with us!” he ordered.
Francesca lifted Arnau from his cradle, and walked, head down, in the direction of the steward’s horse. Bernat shouted and again tried to rise to his feet, but before he could do so, he was knocked flat by one of the horses. Each time he attempted to stand up, the same thing happened: the two horsemen were taking turns to knock him down, laughing as they did so. In the end, Bernat lay on the ground beneath the horses’ hooves, panting and disheveled. The steward rode off, followed by Francesca and the child. When he was no more than a dot in the distance, the two soldiers wheeled away and galloped after him.
Once quiet had returned to the farmhouse, Bernat peered at the cloud of dust trailing off toward the horizon, and then looked over at the two oxen, stolidly chewing on the ears of corn they had been trampling.
From that day on, although Bernat continued working with his animals and on the land, his thoughts returned constantly to his son. At night, he wandered around the farmhouse recalling the childish breathing that spoke of life and the future, the creaking of the wooden slats of the cradle whenever Arnau moved, his shrill cry when he was hungry. He tried to discern his son’s innocent smell in every corner of the house. Where might he be sleeping now? His cradle, the one Bernat had made with his own hands, was here. When finally Bernat succeeded in falling asleep, the silence would wake him with a start. He curled up on his pallet, listening hour after hour to the sounds of the animals down below that now were all the company he had.
Bernat went regularly to Llorenc de Bellera’s castle to have his bread baked. He never saw Francesca: she was shut away to attend to Dona Caterina and her son’s unpredictable appetite. The castle, as his father had explained when the two of them had been obliged to come here together, had started out as little more than a watchtower on the summit of a small hill. Llorenc de Bellera’s forebears had taken advantage of the power vacuum following Count Ramon Borrell’s death to build new fortifications, thanks to the forced labor of the serfs who lived on their ever-expanding territories. Around the keep a hodgepodge of buildings soon grew up, including the bakery, the forge, some new, more spacious stables, kitchens, and sleeping quarters.
The castle was more than a league away from the Estanyol farmhouse. On his first visits, Bernat heard no news of his son. Whenever he inquired, he always received the same reply: his wife and boy were in Dona Caterina’s private apartments. The only difference was that, while some of those he asked laughed cynically, others lowered their gaze as though ashamed to look the child’s father in the eye. Bernat put up with their evasive answers for weeks on end, until one day when he was leaving the bakery with two loaves of bean-flour bread, he ran into one of the scrawny blacksmith apprentices whom he had already questioned several times about his son.
“What do you know about my Arnau?” he asked again.
There was no one else around. The lad tried to avoid him, as if he had not heard, but Bernat seized him by the arm.
“I asked you what you know about my son, Arnau.”
“Your wife and son ...” The apprentice started with the usual formula, not lifting his eyes from the ground.
“I know where he is,” Bernat interrupted him. “I’m asking if my Arnau is well and healthy.”
Still not looking at him, the lad started shuffling his feet in the sand. Bernat shook him roughly.
“Is he well?”
When the apprentice still would not look up, Bernat shook him even harder.
“No!” the lad finally admitted. Bernat loosened his grip so that he could look him in the face. “No,” he said again.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“I can’t ... We have orders not to tell you ...” The apprentice’s voice trailed off.
Bernat raised his voice, not caring whether a guard might hear.
“What’s wrong with my boy? What’s wrong? Tell me!”
“I can’t. We cannot ...”
“Would this change your mind?” asked Bernat, offering him one of the loaves.
The lad’s eyes opened wide. Without a word, he snatched the bread from Bernat’s hands and bit into it as if he had not eaten in days. Bernat pulled him to one side, away from any prying eyes.
“What’s happened to my Arnau?” he asked anxiously.
His mouth stuffed with bread, the apprentice glanced at Bernat, then signaled for him to follow. They crept stealthily along the castle walls until they reached the forge. They crossed it and headed for the back, where the lad opened a door leading into a shed where equipment and tools were kept. He went in, and Bernat followed. As soon as he was inside, the boy sat on the floor and started to devour more bread. Bernat peered around the squalid room. It was stiflingly hot, but he could not understand why the apprentice had brought him there: all he could see was piles of tools and old scraps of iron.
