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41
“YOU’RE NOT THINKING of leaving me here, are you?”
Eleonor flew down the staircase. Arnau was in the great hall, seated at the table signing the documents that annulled the malpractices and privileges on his lands. “As soon as I’ve signed them, I’m leaving,” he had told Joan. The friar was standing with Mar behind Arnau, watching him sign.
Arnau finished what he was doing, and then looked up to confront Eleonor. This must have been the first time they had spoken since their marriage. Arnau did not stand up.
“Why do you want me to stay with you?”
“You don’t expect me to stay in a place where I’ve suffered so much humiliation, do you?”
“I’ll put it another way then: why would you want to come with me?”
“You’re my husband!” screeched Eleonor. She had gone over it time and again: she could not stay at Montbui, but she could not return to court either. Arnau grimaced. “If you go and leave me here, I’ll protest to the king.”
This time, her words gave Arnau pause for thought. “We’ll petition the king!” the nobles had threatened him. He thought he could deal with the threat from the nobles, but ... He looked at the documents he had signed. If the king’s ward Eleonor added her voice to theirs ...
“Sign these,” he said, passing her the parchments.
“Why should I? If you abolish all the privileges, we’ll not receive any revenues.”
“Sign and you will live in a palace on Calle de Montcada in Barcelona. You won’t need the revenues: you’ll have all the money you could wish for.”
Eleonor walked across to the table, picked up the quill, and leaned over the documents.
“What guarantees do I have that you will keep your word?” she asked suddenly, glancing at Arnau.
“The fact that the bigger the palace is, the less I’ll see of you. That’s one guarantee. The fact that the better life you have, the less you’ll bother me. That’s another. Is that enough? I’ve no intention of offering any more.”
Eleonor looked up at the two figures standing behind Arnau. Was that a smile on the girl’s face?
“Are they going to live with us?” she asked, pointing at them with the quill.
“Yes.”
“The girl too?”
Mar and Eleonor glared at each other.
“Wasn’t I clear enough for you, Eleonor? Are you going to sign or not?”
She signed.
ARNAU DID NOT wait for Eleonor to pack all her things. To avoid the August heat he set off that evening in the same rented cart he had arrived in.
None of them looked behind as the cart emerged from the castle gates.
“Why do we have to go and live with her?” Mar asked Arnau during the journey back to Barcelona.
“I cannot afford to offend the king, Mar. One never knows how a king may react.”
Mar sat silently for a few moments, deep in thought.
“Is that why you offered her all you did?”
“No ... Well, yes, in part, but the main reason was the peasants. I don’t want her to make any complaint. The king has supposedly given us the revenues from these lands to live on, even if in fact they are tiny or nonexistent. If she goes to the king and says that through my fault those revenues have vanished, he could possibly overturn my decisions.”
“The king ... Why would the king ... ?”
“You need to know that only a few years ago the king published a decree against the serfs, a decree that even went against privileges he and his predecessors had given the cities. The Church and nobility had demanded he take measures against any serfs who escaped and left their lands untended ... and the king did so.”
“I didn’t think he would do anything like that.”
“He’s just another noble, Mar, even if he is first among them.”
They spent the night in a farmhouse outside the village of Montcada. Arnau paid the peasants generously. They rose at dawn and were in Barcelona before the heat of the day.
“The situation is dramatic, Guillem,” Arnau told him once everyone had finished their greetings and the two men were on their own. “The Catalan countryside is in a far worse state than we thought. We hear about it only when there is news, but when you see how bad the fields and properties are, you realize we are in real trouble.”
“I’ve been taking that into account for some time now,” Guillem said, to Arnau’s surprise. “It’s a real crisis, but I could see it coming. We’ve talked about it, if you remember. Our currency is constantly losing value in foreign markets, but the king is not doing anything about it here in Catalonia, and the exchange rate is unsustainable. The city is falling deeper and deeper into debt in order to finance everything it has created in Barcelona. Nobody is making any profit from trade, and so people are looking for more secure places to invest.”
“What about our business?”
“I’ve moved it outside the country. To Pisa, Florence, even Genoa. Those are places where we can trade with logical exchange rates.” The two men fell silent. “Castello has been declared
