Cathedral of the Sea

deathbeds. When Arnau handed them Maria’s body, they were so astonished that they laid her gently on top of the dozen or so bodies already in their cart.

With tears in his eyes, Arnau watched as the cart disappeared in the streets of Barcelona. He would be next: he went back into his house and sat to wait for the death that would reunite him with Maria. For three days, Arnau awaited the plague, constantly feeling his neck for a swelling that refused to appear. There were no ganglions, and so Arnau finally had to accept that, for the moment, the Lord was not calling him to his side to be with Maria.

Arnau walked along the beach, oblivious to the waves lapping the shore of the cursed city. He wandered through the streets of Barcelona, oblivious to the misery, the dying, and the cries from house windows. Something took him once more to Santa Maria. Building work had been suspended, and the scaffolding was empty. Blocks of stone lay all around, waiting for the masons, and yet ordinary people still flocked to the church. Arnau went in. The faithful were clustered around the unfinished high altar, standing or kneeling to pray. Although the church still did not have walls around the main apses, the atmosphere was filled with the perfume of incense that was burned to conceal the smell of death that penetrated everywhere. As Arnau was heading for the Virgin statue, he heard a priest talking to the congregation.

“You should know,” he told them, “that our supreme pontiff, Pope Clement the Sixth, has published a bull in which he absolves the Jews of all blame for causing the plague. The disease is a trial sent by God to test his Christian people.” There were murmurs of disapproval from the flock. “Pray,” the priest said, “and commend yourselves to the Lord ...”

As they left the church, many of the worshippers were arguing about what the priest had said.

Arnau paid no attention to the homily, but walked on to the Jesus chapel. The Jews? What could that possibly have to do with the plague? As ever, his little Virgin was waiting for him in the same place. As usual, the bastaixos candles kept her company. Who could have lit them? This time, though, because of the thick clouds of incense, Arnau could not see his holy mother’s face: he did not see her smile. He tried to pray but found it impossible. “Why did you allow her to die?” The tears rolled down his cheeks again as he remembered Maria and all her suffering, her body racked with pain, the dreadful ganglions that had devoured her. If it had been a punishment, he should have been the one to suffer: he was the one who had sinned by being unfaithful with Aledis.

Standing there in front of his Virgin, he sore a solemn oath that never again would he allow himself to be carried away by lust. He owed that to Maria. Whatever happened. Never.

“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