Bernat could not help staring at the red and yellow badge on the old man’s chest. Then he peered inside what he had at first thought was a fortified castle. Everyone going in and out was a Jew! And they all wore this distinguishing mark. Was it forbidden to talk to them?
“Did you want something?” the old man repeated.
“How ... how do I find the potters’ quarter?”
“Carry on straight down this street,” said the old man, pointing the direction. “That will take you to the Boqueria gate. Follow the wall down toward the sea, and at the next gate you’ll find the neighborhood you’re looking for.”
In fact, the Church had forbidden only carnal relations with the Jews; that was why it forced them to wear the badge, so that nobody could claim not to have realized whom they were consorting with. The priests always railed against them, and yet this old man ...
“Thank you, friend,” said Bernat with a timid smile.
“Thank you,” the old Jewish man replied. “But in the future, take care that no one sees you talking to one of us ... let alone smiling at us.” His lips twisted in a sad grimace.
At the Boqueria gate, Bernat found himself caught up in a crowd of women who were buying offal and goat’s meat. He watched them examining the wares and bargaining with the stallholders. “This is the meat that gives our lord all his problems,” Bernat muttered to his son, and then laughed at the thought of Llorenc de Bellera. How often had he heard him threatening the shepherds and the cattlemen who supplied Barcelona with meat! But he never dared go any further, because anyone taking livestock to the city had the right to graze them wherever they liked in all Catalonia.
Bernat skirted the market and walked down to the Trentaclaus gate. The streets here were wider, and as he drew close to the gate, he saw dozens of pots, bowls, jars, and bricks drying in the sun in front of the houses.
“I’m looking for Grau Puig’s house,” he told one of the soldiers guarding the gate.
THE PUIG FAMILY had been neighbors of the Estanyols. Bernat well remembered Grau, the fourth of eight starving children who could never get enough to eat from their meager landholding. His mother had a special affection for the Puig children, because their mother had helped give birth to Bernat and his sister. Grau was the brightest and hardest-working of them all; that was why, when Josep Puig received a kinsman’s offer for one of them to become a potter’s apprentice in Barcelona, it was Grau he chose. Grau was ten years old at the time.
But if Josep Puig found it hard to feed his family, it was going to be impossible for him to find the two bushels of white flour and the ten shillings his relative was demanding in return for taking on Grau for his five years’ apprenticeship. Added to which were the two additional shillings that Llorenc de Bellera demanded in order to free a serf from his obligations, and the clothes Grau would need for the first two years of his apprenticeship : the master potter had agreed to supply only what was necessary for the last three.
This was what brought Josep Puig to the Estanyol farmhouse with Grau, who was a few years older than Bernat and his sister. Old man Estanyol listened closely to Puig’s proposition: if he endowed his daughter with the list of things Puig outlined and offered them to Grau at once, Puig promised his son would marry Guiamona as soon as Grau reached the age of eighteen and was a qualified craftsman. The old man studied the boy: sometimes, when Grau’s family was in dire need, Grau had come to lend a hand in the Estanyol fields. The boy had never asked for payment, but Estanyol had always made sure he went home with some vegetables or grain. He trusted him. He accepted the offer.
After five years’ hard work as an apprentice, Grau became a qualified craftsman. He was still bound to the master potter, who was sufficiently pleased with him to start paying him a wage. When Grau reached eighteen, Grau kept his promise and married Guiamona.
“My son,” his father said to Bernat, “I’ve decided to give Guiamona a fresh dowry. There are only two of us, and we have the best and most fertile lands in the region. They might need the money.”
“Father,” Bernat interrupted him, “why do you think it’s necessary to give me an explanation?”
“Because your sister has already received her dowry, and you are my heir. The money is yours by right.”
“Do as you see fit.”
Four years later, when he was twenty-two, Grau sat the public examination, which took place in front of four officers of the guild. He made his first pieces for them: a water jug, two plates, and a bowl. The four men looked on closely, and then unanimously granted him the title of master potter. This allowed him to open his own workshop in Barcelona, and of course to use his own stamp, which was to be put on every piece of pottery made in his workshop, in case there were any complaints about his work. To honor the meaning of the word “grau” in Catalan, he chose the outline of a mountain as his stamp.
Grau and Guiamona, who by now was pregnant, moved into a small, one-story house in the potters’ quarter. By royal decree, this was situated on the western edge of the city, in the land between the new wall built by King Jaime I and the ancient Roman fortifications. They used Guiamona’s dowry to buy the property, having saved it for just such an occasion.
It was there, with the pottery workshop and their living quarters sharing the same space as the kiln and the bedrooms, that Grau began his career as a master potter. It was a time when the expansion of Catalan trade was bringing about a revolution among the potters, calling for a specialization that many of them could not accept.
“We’re going to make only jugs and storage jars,” declared Grau. “That’s all.” Guiamona glanced at the four masterful pieces he had made for his examination. “I’ve seen lots of traders,” he went on, “begging for jars to sell their oil, honey, or wine in. And I’ve seen lots of potters turn them away on the spot because their kilns were full of complicated tiles for a new house, bright crockery for a noble, or an apothecary’s pots.”
Guiamona ran her fingers over the masterpieces he had created. How smooth they were to the touch! When Grau had triumphantly presented them to her after passing his examination, she had imagined that she would be surrounded with similar beautiful pieces. Even the guild officers had congratulated Grau, because he had shown he was a true master of his craft: the decorations of zigzag lines, palm leaves, rosettes, and fleur-de-lys on the water jug, the two plates, and the bowl, displayed a wealth of color on a white tin glaze background; the coppery green so typical of Barcelona that every master potter had to use, but also violet manganese, black iron, cobalt blue, and antimony yellow. Each line or design was of a different shade. Guiamona could scarcely wait for the pieces to be fired, in case the clay cracked. As a finishing touch, Grau applied a layer of clear lead glaze, which made them entirely waterproof. Guiamona could still feel how much smoother they were. But now ... all her husband was going to make was storage jars.
