“What about her character?”
“She’s a noblewoman,” was all Joan would say.
Why tell Arnau what he had heard about Eleonor? “She’s definitely attractive,” they had told him, “but she always looks as though she is angry with the whole world. She is spoiled, fickle, haughty, and ambitious.” The king married her to a nobleman, but he died soon afterward, and as she had no children she returned to court. Was the king granting Arnau a favor? A royal reward? The people Joan spoke to had laughed at the idea. The king could not tolerate Eleonor anymore, so who better to marry her off to than one of the richest men in Barcelona, a money changer who could well be a source of loans? Whatever happened, King Pedro came out winning: he was getting rid of Eleonor and at the same time gaining access to Arnau and his wealth. No, there was no reason to tell him all this.
“What do you mean when you say she is a noblewoman?”
“Exactly that,” said Joan, trying to avoid Arnau’s eyes. “She’s noble, she’s a woman, and therefore she has a well-defined character, as all of them do.”
Eleonor had also been making inquiries on her own side. The more she heard, the angrier she became: her husband-to-be had been a
Pedro the Third would not even see her. He ordered that the wedding take place on June 21, two days before he left for Mallorca.
HE WAS TO be married the next day. In the royal chapel at Santa Agata.
“It’s a small chapel,” Joan explained. “It was built at the start of the century by Jaime the Second at the behest of his wife, Blanca de Anjou. It’s dedicated to the relics of Christ’s passion in the same way as the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, where the queen was born.”
It was to be an intimate affair: Joan was the only person accompanying Arnau. Mar had refused to attend. Ever since Arnau had announced his marriage, she had shied away from him. Whenever they were in a room together, she said nothing, and all her previous smiles had stopped.
That was why this final evening Arnau approached her and asked her to go for a walk with him.
“Where?” asked Mar.
Where?
“I don’t know ... what about Santa Maria? Your father adored the church. Did you know it was there that I met him?”
Mar agreed, so they left the countinghouse and walked down to the still unfinished facade of Santa Maria. The masons had begun work on the two octagonal towers that were to flank it, and the sculptors had already set to with hammer and chisel on the tympanum, doorposts, mullions, and archivolts. Arnau went into the church with Mar. The ribbed vaults of the central nave’s third arch were already stretching up toward the keystone, like a spider’s web protected by the wooden scaffolding as they grew.
Arnau was only too aware of Mar standing beside him. She was almost as tall as he was, and her hair flowed down to her shoulders. She smelled of freshness, of herbs. Most of the workmen stared admiringly at her; he could see it in their eyes, even if they turned away as soon as they realized Arnau was looking at them. Her fragrance wafted across to him in waves as she walked down the nave.
“Why don’t you want to come to my wedding?” he asked her point-blank.
Mar said nothing. She looked desperately around the church.
“They haven’t even allowed me to be married in my Santa Maria,” muttered Arnau.
The girl still made no response.
“Mar ...” Arnau waited for her to turn toward him. “I would have liked you to be with me on my wedding day. You know I don’t want to do it, that it’s against my will, but the king ... I won’t insist anymore, all right?” Mar nodded. “If I don’t insist, can things be the same between us as they were before?”
Mar looked at the ground. There was so much she would have loved to tell him ... But she could not refuse him what he asked; she could not refuse him anything.
“Thank you,” said Arnau. “If you had failed me ... I don’t know what would happen to me if those I most care about failed me!”
Mar shivered. That was not the sort of feeling she was looking for. She wanted love. Why had she agreed to come with him like this? She gazed up at the apse of the church.
“You know, Joan and I saw them raising that keystone,” Arnau told her when he saw the direction she was looking in. “We were only boys then.”
At that moment, the master glassmakers were hard at work on the clerestory, the set of windows under the apse roof. They had already finished the upper tier, where the Gothic arch was rounded off with a small rose window. After the clerestory, they would work on the set of big arched windows underneath. They placed small pieces of colored glass, held by strips of lead, into the window space. The sunlight streamed in through the glass.
“At that time,” Arnau went on, “I was lucky enough to talk to the great Berenguer de Montagut. I remember him saying that we Catalans need no more decoration than space and light. He pointed to the apse where you’re looking now, then drew his hand down toward the high altar as though the light were pouring down. I told him I understood what he was talking about, but in fact I could not imagine what he meant.” Mar looked at him. “I was only young,” he said to justify himself, “and he was the master builder, the great Berenguer de Montagut. Now I do understand.” He went closer to Mar and raised a hand up toward the rose window high in the apse. Mar tried to hide the shiver that ran through her when he touched her. “Do you see how the light comes into the church?” Then he drew his hand down toward the altar, just as Berenguer had done all those years ago, although now he could point to shafts of colored light flooding in. Fascinated, Mar followed Arnau’s hand. “Take a good look. The stained glass facing the sun is in bright colors: reds, yellows, and greens, to take advantage of the strong Mediterranean light. The others are white or blue. All through the day as the sun moves round, the color in the church interior
