Cathedral of the Sea

promise the first time, which was meant to be the only one he came near her, but soon desire overcame his knight’s sense of honor.

Nothing that Arnau imagined, with tears in his eyes and quaking heart, could compare to what Mar had really suffered.

When the missatges entered Santa Maria, all work on the church stopped. Their captain’s words echoed as loudly as they did in the Consulate courtroom:

“Most honorable consul, it is true. Your daughter has been seized and is being held by the knight Felip de Ponts.”

“Have you spoken to him?”

“No, Your Honor. He has barricaded himself in his tower and refused to accept our authority. He claims that this has nothing to do with commerce or the sea.”

“Do you know how the girl is?”

The captain lowered his gaze.

Arnau clawed at the footstool. “He is challenging my authority? If it’s authority he wants,” he growled between clenched teeth, “I’ll see he gets it.”

THE NEWS OF Mar’s abduction spread rapidly. At dawn the next morning all the bells of Barcelona began to ring. The cry of “Via fora” came from the throats of all the citizens in the streets: a woman from Barcelona had to be rescued.

As so often in the past, Plaza del Blat became the meeting point for the sometent, the army of Barcelona. Soon all the guilds of the city were present in the square. Not one was missing; they all lined up beneath their pennants, fully armed. Instead of wearing his fine merchant’s clothes, Arnau donned the tunic he had worn when he had fought under Eiximen d’Esparca and later against Pedro the Cruel. He still had his father’s precious crossbow, which he had never wanted to replace and which he now stroked as he had never done before. He tucked into his belt the dagger he had used so skillfully years before to kill his enemies.

When he appeared in the square, more than three thousand men cheered him. The standard-bearers raised their pennants. Swords, spears, and crossbows were waved above the heads of the crowd, as they shouted a deafening “Via fora!” Arnau did not react, but Joan and Eleonor turned pale. Arnau searched beyond the sea of weapons and pennants: the money changers did not belong to any guild.

“Was this part of your plans?” the Dominican asked Eleonor above the hubbub.

Eleonor was staring fearfully at the massed guilds. The whole of Barcelona had come out to support Arnau. They were waving their weapons in the air and howling. All for that wretched young girl!

At last Arnau saw the pennant he was looking for. The crowd opened in front of him to allow him to join the bastaix guild.

“Was this part of your plans?” the friar asked again. Both of them watched Arnau striding away into the crowd. Eleonor made no reply. “They’ll eat your knight alive. They will destroy his lands, raze his farmhouse, and then ...”

“Then what?” grunted Eleonor, still staring straight ahead of her.

“Then I’ll lose my brother. Perhaps we’re still in time to do something. This is going to end badly ...,” thought Joan.

“Speak to him ...,” he insisted.

“Are you mad, Friar?”

“What if he won’t accept the marriage? What if Felip de Ponts tells him everything? Talk to him before the host sets off. For the love of God, do it, Eleonor!”

“For the love of God?” As she spat out the words, she turned to face him. “You speak to your God. Do it, Friar.”

They followed Arnau toward the bastaix pennant. They met Guillem, who as a slave was not allowed to bear arms.

When he saw her arriving, Arnau frowned.

“She’s a ward of mine as well,” she said.

The city councillors gave the order. The army of the people of Barcelona began to march out of the square. The pennants of Sant Jordi and the city were at the head, followed by that of the bastaixos and then all the other guilds. Three thousand men against a single knight. Eleonor and Joan fell in beside them.

Outside the city, the host was joined by more than a hundred peasants from Arnau’s lands. They were happy to come to the defense of someone who had treated them so generously. Arnau noticed that no other nobles or knights were among them.

Grim-faced, Arnau walked alongside the pennant with the bastaix column. Joan tried to pray, but the words that usually came so readily to him now stubbornly refused to appear in his mind. Neither he nor Eleonor had ever imagined that Arnau would call out the host. Joan was still deafened by the noise of the three thousand men clamoring for justice and vengeance for a citizen of Barcelona. Many of them had kissed their daughters before they left; more than one, already strapped into their armor, had cupped their wives’ chins in their hands and told them: “Barcelona defends its own ... especially its women.”

“They will lay waste to poor Felip de Ponts’s lands as if it were their own daughter who had been abducted,” thought Joan. “They will try him and execute him, but first they will give him the chance to talk ...” Joan looked at Arnau, who was still marching along in silence.

By evening, the host had reached Felip de Ponts’s lands. It came to a halt at the foot of a small hill atop of which the knight’s fortress was perched. It was nothing more than a peasant farmhouse; its only defenses consisted of a small tower rising on one side. Joan studied the farmhouse, then surveyed the army awaiting its orders from the city councillors. He looked at Eleonor, who avoided his gaze. Three thousand men to take one simple farmhouse!