Cathedral of the Sea

“It is, Mar,” said Guillem, pursing his lips, “but this is only the first installment.”

Mar began to play with the ivory abacus. How often, hidden in the kitchen, had she watched as Arnau worked on it? His face was always serious, and he concentrated hard while he moved the counters and noted down figures in his books. Mar shivered the length of her spine.

“Is something wrong?” asked Guillem.

“No... no.”

Why not tell him? Guillem would understand, she said to herself. Except for Donaha, who could not help but smile whenever she saw Mar hiding in the kitchen to spy on Arnau, nobody else was aware of it. All the girls who met in the merchant Escales’s house talked about the same thing. Some of them were already betrothed, and liked nothing better than to praise the virtues of their husbands-to-be. Mar listened to them, but always avoided their questions to her. How could she mention Arnau? What if he found out? Arnau was thirty-four; she was only fourteen. But one of the girls was betrothed to someone even older than Arnau! Mar would have loved to be able to tell someone. Her friends could chatter about money, appearance, attractiveness, manliness, or generosity, but she knew that Arnau was better than any of them! Did not the bastaixos Mar occasionally met on the beach tell her that Arnau had been one of King Pedro’s bravest soldiers? Mar had discovered his old weapons in the bottom of a chest. When she was all alone she would pick them up and caress them, imagining Arnau surrounded by enemies and fighting them off valiantly as the bastaixos had told her he did.

Guillem studied the young girl. Mar sat there, the tip of her finger on one of the abacus counters, staring into space. Money? Bags and bags of it. Everyone in Barcelona knew that. And as for his kindness ...

“Are you sure nothing’s wrong?” Guillem asked again, startling her out of her daydream.

Mar blushed. Donaha always claimed that anybody could read her thoughts, that the name of Arnau was on her lips, her eyes, her whole face. What if Guillem knew this too?

“No... ,” she repeated, “nothing.”

Guillem replaced the abacus counters and Mar smiled at him... with a sad expression. What could be going through her mind? Perhaps Brother Joan was right; she was already of marriageable age, and here she was, shut up in a house with two men...

Mar took her finger off the abacus.

“Guillem.”

“Tell me.”

She fell silent.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” she said finally, getting up from her chair.

Guillem watched her as she left the room; it was hard to admit it, but the friar was probably right.

HE WENT UP to them. He had walked to the shore while the ships, three galleys and a carrack, entered the port. The carrack belonged to him. Isabel was dressed in black, and with one hand held on to her hat. Her stepsons, Josep and Genis, were standing beside her, with their backs to him. All three were peering desperately at the ships. “They won’t bring you any relief,” thought Arnau.

As he strode by in his best clothes, bastaixos, boatmen, and merchants had all fallen silent.

“Look at me, you harpy!” Arnau thought and waited, a few steps from the water’s edge. “Look at me! The last time you did...” The baroness turned slowly toward him; her sons did the same. Arnau took a deep breath. “The last time you did, my father was hanging above my head.”

The bastaixos and boatmen were muttering to one another.

“Is there something you need, Arnau?” asked one of the aldermen.

Arnau shook his head, not taking his eyes off Isabel’s face for a moment. The others moved away, and Arnau found himself next to the baroness and his cousins.

He breathed deeply once more. Defiantly, he stared Isabel in the eye for a few more seconds, then glanced at his cousins, and finally looked out to sea, smiling.

The baroness’s lips tightened. She too turned toward the sea, following Arnau’s gaze. When she looked toward him again, he was already striding away, the sunlight glinting off the precious stones on his cloak.

JOAN WAS STILL intent on seeing Mar married. He proposed several candidates: it was not difficult to find them. As soon as they heard the size of Mar’s dowry, nobles and merchants came running, but... how was the girl herself to be told? Joan offered to do it, but when Arnau told Guillem as much, the Moor was resolutely against the idea.

“You have to do it,” he said. “Not a monk she hardly knows.”

Ever since Guillem had insisted in this way, Arnau could not take his eyes off the girl. Did he know her? They had lived in the same house for years now, but it had been Guillem who always looked after her. All he had done had been to enjoy her being there, to hear her laughter and cheery banter. He had never talked to her about anything serious. Now, whenever he considered approaching her and asking her to go for a walk with him, on the beach or—why not?—to Santa Maria, whenever he thought of telling her they had to discuss a serious matter, he realized he knew little about her ... and hesitated. Where was the little girl he used to carry on his shoulders?

“I don’t want to marry any of them,” she told them. Arnau and Guillem looked at each other. Eventually, Arnau had persuaded the Moor they should bring the subject up together.

“You have to help me,” he had pleaded with him.

Mar’s eyes lit up when the two men mentioned marriage to her. They were sitting behind their accounting table, with her in front of them on the other side, as if this were another commercial transaction. But she shook her head at the mention of each of the five candidates that Brother Joan had suggested.

“But, Mar,” Guillem insisted, “you have to choose someone. Any girl would be proud to marry one of the names we have mentioned.”