“She will do whatever she wants, Joan.”
“But...”
“No buts about it. That is my decision.”
“KNOCK,” ARNAU SAID to him.
Guillem knocked with the heavy door knocker. The sound echoed along the deserted street. Nobody came to open.
“Knock again.”
Guillem knocked again, not once but seven, eight times. At the ninth, the peephole opened.
“What’s the matter?” the eyes on the other side of the door asked. “What’s all this fuss? Who are you?”
Clinging to Arnau’s arm, Mar could feel him grow tense.
“Open up!” Arnau commanded.
“In whose name?”
“Arnau Estanyol,” Guillem said solemnly, “owner of this building and of everything there is in it, including yourself if you are a slave.”
“Arnau Estanyol, the owner of this building...” Guillem’s words resounded in Arnau’s ears. How long had it been? Twenty years? Twenty-two? Behind the spyhole, the eyes hesitated.
“Open up!” Guillem insisted.
Arnau looked up at the heavens. He was thinking of his father.
“What... ?” the girl began to ask.
“Nothing, nothing,” Arnau said with a smile, just as one of the doors that allowed people on foot into the palace opened in the huge double gate.
Guillem stood back to let Arnau past.
“Both gates, Guillem. I want them to open both gates wide.”
Guillem went inside, and Arnau and Mar could hear him giving orders.
“Can you see me, Father? Do you remember? This was where they gave you that bag of money that led to your downfall. What else could you have done?” Arnau recalled the rising in Plaza del Blat; people shouting, his father one of them, all of them pleading to be given grain! Arnau could feel a lump rise in his throat.
The gates opened and Arnau went in.
Several slaves were standing in the courtyard. On the right was the staircase up to the principal rooms. Arnau did not look up at them, but Mar had no hesitation, and could see shadows moving behind the windows. The stables were in front of them: the grooms were lined up outside. “My God!” Arnau’s whole body shook. He leaned on Mar, and she glanced at him.
“Here you are,” said Guillem to Arnau, handing him a rolled-up parchment.
Arnau did not take it. He knew what was in it. He had learned its contents by heart ever since Guillem had shown it to him the previous day. It was an inventory of all Grau Puig’s possessions that the magistrate had awarded Arnau in payment of his debts: the palace, the slaves—Arnau looked in vain for the name of Estranya on the list—together with several properties outside Barcelona, among which was a small house in Navarcles in which he decided to allow the Puig family to live. Some jewels; two pairs of horses with all their harnesses; a carriage; suits and other clothing; pots, pans, and crockery; carpets and furniture—everything in the palace was detailed on this rolled-up parchment that Arnau had read time and again the previous evening.
He glanced once more at the door to the stables, then surveyed all the cobbled courtyard ... until his eyes alighted on the foot of the staircase.
“Shall we go up?” asked Guillem.
“Yes. Take me to your mas—to Grau Puig,” Arnau corrected himself.
The slave led them upstairs. Mar and Guillem looked all around them; Arnau stared straight ahead. The slave led them to the main chamber.
“Announce me,” Arnau said to Guillem before the doors were opened.
“Arnau Estanyol!” his friend cried out, flinging them open.
Arnau did not remember what this main chamber was like. As a young boy he had not even looked when he had crossed it... on his knees. Nor did he pay much attention this time. Isabel was seated in a chair next to one of the windows. Josep and Genis were standing on either side of her. The former, like his sister, Margarida, was married now. Genis was still unmarried. Arnau looked for Josep’s family, but could not see them. In another chair sat Grau Puig, a drooling old man.
Isabel confronted him, eyes blazing.
Arnau stood in the middle of the room, next to a hardwood dining table that was twice as long as the one in his countinghouse. Mar and Guillem were both behind him. The family slaves had clustered in the doorway.
Arnau spoke in a loud enough voice for everyone in the room to hear.
“Guillem, those shoes are mine,” he said, pointing to Isabel’s feet. “Get her to take them off.”
“Yes, Master.”
Mar was taken aback, and turned toward the Moor. Master? She knew Guillem was a slave, but had never before heard him speak to Arnau in this way.
