half-open gates of the Jewry and persuade him to withdraw his troops. The flagellants kept up their shouting and dancing around them, while the crowd continued to hurl threats against the Jews, whom they could not even see.
“They won’t withdraw,” Arnau heard a woman next to him say.
“The Jews are royal property; they depend entirely on the king,” another man agreed. “If the Jews die, the king will lose all the taxes he’s imposed on them...”
“And all the loans he’s had from those usurers.”
“Not just that,” said a third man. “If the Jewry is attacked, the king will lose even the furniture the Jews offer him and his court whenever they come to Barcelona.”
“The nobles will have to sleep on the floor,” someone shouted, to general laughter.
Arnau himself could not help smiling.
“The magistrate will defend the king’s interests,” the woman asserted.
She was proved right. The magistrate did not back down, and as soon as the two sides had finished talking, he shut himself inside the Jewry. That was the signal the mob had been waiting for. Before the gate was even shut, those closest to the walls rushed at it, while the others flung sticks, arrows, and stones over the walls. The assault had begun.
Arnau watched as the hate-filled crowd threw themselves at the gates and walls of the Jewry. No one was leading them; the only thing resembling orders was the cries of the flagellants who were still whipping themselves beneath the walls and urging the others to scale them and kill the heretics. When they did succeed in climbing over, many of them fell to the royal soldiers’ swords, but the Jewry was under siege from all four sides now, and many more overran the defenders and began to attack any Jews they could find.
Arnau stayed on the steps of San Jaume for two hours. The war cries reminded him of his days as a soldier: Bellaguarda and Castell-Rossello. The faces of those who fell mingled with those of the men he himself had killed; the smell of blood took him back to Rosellon, to the lies that had led him to that absurd war, to Aledis and Maria ... As he recalled all this, he left his vantage point.
Leaving behind the massacre, Arnau walked down toward the sea, still thinking of Maria and what had forced him to seek a way out in fighting. All at once, his thoughts were interrupted. He was level with Castell de Regomir, a tower in the old Roman wall, when shouting close by forced him back to reality.
“Heretics!”
“Murderers!”
Arnau found himself confronted by a group of about twenty people filling the street. They were brandishing sticks and knives and shrieking at some others who must have been pressed up against a house wall. Why could they not simply mourn their dead? Arnau did not want to stop, and pushed his way through the enraged attackers. As he was forcing a path for himself, he glanced briefly at the spot they had surrounded: in a house doorway a bloody-faced Moorish slave was using his body to try to protect three children dressed in black with the yellow badge on their chests. Arnau suddenly found himself in between the Moor and his attackers. Silence fell, and the children’s terrified faces peeped out from behind their protector. Arnau glanced at them: how he regretted never having given Maria any children! A stone flew through the air toward them. It grazed Arnau, and when the Moor stepped into its path, hit him in the stomach. He doubled up with pain. A child’s tiny face peered directly at Arnau. His wife had loved children: she had not cared whether they were Christians, Moors, or Jews. She would gaze at them on the beach, in the streets of the city ... Her eyes would follow them tenderly, and then she would look back at him ...
“Move away! Get out of our way, will you?” Arnau heard a voice shout behind his back.
Arnau looked again at the pair of terrified eyes in front of him.
“What do you want with these children?” he growled.
Several men armed with knives confronted him.
“They’re Jews,” they said as one.
“And just for that you’re going to kill them? Aren’t their parents enough for you?”
“They’ve poisoned the wells,” one of the men said. “They killed Jesus. They kill Christian children for their heretical rites. Yes, they tear their hearts out ... they steal the sacred host.” Arnau was not listening. He could still smell the blood of the Jewry ... of Castell-Rossello. He seized the man closest to him by the arm, punched him in the face, and took his knife. Then he confronted the others.
“Nobody is to harm any children!”
The attackers watched Arnau wielding the knife, drawing circles with it in the air. They saw the look of determination in his eyes.
“Nobody is going to harm any children,” he repeated. “Go and fight in the Jewry, against the soldiers, against grown men.”
“They will kill you,” warned the Moor, who now was behind him.
“Heretic!” the attackers cried.
“Jew!”
Arnau had been taught to attack first, to catch his enemy unawares, not to let him gain confidence, to frighten him. Shouting, “Sant Jordi!” Arnau launched himself at the nearest men. He plunged his dagger into the first one’s stomach, then whirled round, forcing the others to back off. His dagger sliced the chests of several more. From the ground, one of the wounded men stabbed him in the calf. Arnau looked down, seized him by the hair, pulled his head back, and slashed his throat. Blood came spurting out. Three men were lying on the ground; the others began to draw back. “Withdraw when you are outnumbered,” was another piece of advice Arnau remembered. He made as if to charge again, and the assailants fell over one another trying to get away. Without looking behind him, Arnau gestured to the Moor to gather the children to him, and when he could feel them around his legs, he backed away down toward the beach, still glaring at the armed group.
“They’re waiting for you in the Jewry,” he shouted at them, still shepherding the children away.
