silence. The Castillian fleet was drawing closer. Above the sound of the distant bells, Arnau could hear the ship’s keel scraping over sand.
“It has to work!” he muttered.
Guillem seized him by the arm and squeezed it tightly. It was the first time he had ever reacted like this.
The ship glided slowly on and on. Arnau glanced at the captain. “Are we in the channel?” he asked merely by raising his eyebrows. The captain nodded: ever since Arnau had told him to stop rowing, the captain had realized what he was trying to do.
The whole of Barcelona realized.
“Now!” shouted Arnau. “Turn the ship!”
The captain gave the order. The oarsmen on the larboard side plunged their oars into the water, and the carrack began to swing round until prow and stern were stuck firmly in the two sides of the deep channel.
The ship listed to one side.
Guillem squeezed Arnau’s arm even harder. The two men looked at each other and Arnau drew the Moor close to embrace him, while the beach and the king’s galleys exploded with cries of congratulation.
The entrance to the port of Barcelona had been sealed.
In full battle armor on the beach, the king watched as Arnau deliberately ran his ship aground. The nobles and knights grouped around the king said nothing as he stared out to sea.
“To the galleys!” he ordered.
WITH ARNAU’S CARRACK blocking the harbor, Pedro the Cruel deployed his fleet in the open sea. King Pedro the Third did the same on the port side of the sandbanks, and so before nightfall the two fleets—one a proper armada, made up of forty armed and prepared warships, the other a picturesque motley of craft, with ten galleys and dozens of small merchant ships and fishing boats crammed with ordinary citizens—were drawn up facing one another in a line that ran from Santa Clara to Framenors. No one could either enter or leave the port of Barcelona.
There was no battle that day. Five of Pedro the Third’s galleys took up position close to Arnau’s ship, and that night, by the light of a glorious moon, a company of royal soldiers came aboard.
“It seems as though we’re at the center of the battle,” Guillem commented to Arnau as the two men sat on deck, close to the side in order to shelter themselves from any Castillian crossbowmen.
“We’ve become the city wall, and all battles start with the walls.”
At that moment, one of the king’s captains came up.
“Arnau Estanyol?” he asked. Arnau raised a hand. “The king authorizes you to leave the ship.”
“What about my crew?”
“The galley slaves?” Even in the darkness, Arnau and Guillem could see the look of surprise on the officer’s face. What did the king care about a hundred convicts? “We might need them here,” he said, to avoid the question.
“In that case,” said Arnau, “I’m staying. This is my ship, and they are my crew.”
At that the officer shrugged and went on deploying his men.
“Do you want to leave?” Arnau asked Guillem.
“Aren’t I part of your crew?”
“No, as you know very well.” The two men fell silent, watching shadows passing by them as the soldiers ran to take up their positions in response to their officers’ half-whispered commands. “You know you haven’t been a slave for many years now,” added Arnau. “All you have to do is ask for your letter of emancipation and it’s yours.”
Some of the soldiers came to take up position next to them.
“You should go down to the hold with the others,” one of the soldiers muttered as he pushed in beside them.
“In this ship we go where we please,” Arnau replied.
The soldier bent over the two men. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We are all grateful for what you’ve done.”
Then he went off to search for another place by the gunwale.
“When will you want to be free?” Arnau asked Guillem again.
“I don’t think I would know how to be free.”
At this, the two men fell silent. Once all the king’s soldiers had boarded the ship and taken up their positions, the night went slowly by. Arnau and Guillem slept fitfully while the others coughed or snored around them.
At dawn, Pedro the Cruel ordered the attack. His fleet approached the sandbanks, and his men began to fire their crossbows and to shoot stones from catapults and bricolas. From the other side of the banks, the Catalan fleet did the same. There was fighting all the way down the coast, but especially around Arnau’s carrack. Pedro the Third could not allow the Castillians to board it, and stationed several galleys close by.
Many men died from the crossbow bolts fired from both armies. Arnau remembered the whistle of the arrows as he had fired them from his crossbow, crouching behind the boulders outside Bellaguarda castle.
The sound of raucous laughter brought him back to reality. Who on earth could be laughing in the midst of battle? Barcelona was in danger, and men were dying. What was there to laugh about? Arnau and Guillem stared at each other. Yes, it was laughter. Laughter that was growing louder and louder. The two men sought a sheltered spot where they could survey what was going on. They soon realized that it was the men aboard ships in the second or third line of the Catalan fleet, who were out of range of the Castillians and were making fun of their enemy, laughing and shouting insults at them.
