“Yes,” Joan assured him. The prior looked him up and down. “If I can only leave Barcelona, I will feel better.”
“So be it. Next week you are to leave for the north.”
His destination was a region of small farming villages dedicated to growing crops or raising livestock. They were hidden in valleys and mountains, and their inhabitants were terrified by the arrival of an inquisitor. The Inquisition was nothing new to them: since more than a century earlier, when Ramon de Penyafort was charged by Pope Innocent the Fourth with bringing the institution to the kingdom of Aragon and the principality of Narbonne, these villages had suffered visits from the black friars. Most of the doctrines that the Catholic Church considered heretical came through Catalonia from France: first the Cathars and the Waldensians, then the Beghards and finally the Templars when they were chased out by the French king. The border regions were the first to come under these heretical influences, and many of their nobles were condemned and executed: Viscount Arnau and his wife, Ermessenda; Ramon the lord of Cadi; and Guillem de Niort, the deputy of Count Nuno Sane in the Cerdagne and Coflent. These were the lands Joan was called upon to work in.
“Your Excellency.” He was greeted by a party of the leading citizens of one of these villages. They all bowed before him.
“Do not call me ‘Excellency,’” insisted Joan, urging them to straighten up. “Simply say, ‘Brother Joan.’”
In his brief experience, this scene had already been repeated time and again. The news of his arrival, accompanied by a scribe and half a dozen soldiers from the Holy Office, always preceded him.
Now he found himself in the main square of the village. He surveyed the four men who still stood in front of him with bowed heads. They had taken off their caps, and shifted uneasily. Although there was no one else in the square, Joan knew that many pairs of hidden eyes were watching him. Did they have so much to hide?
After being received in this way, Joan knew they would offer him the best lodgings in the village. There he would find a table that was too well stocked for the possibilities of people like these.
“I only want a piece of cheese, some bread, and water. Take away all the rest and make sure my men are seen to,” he repeated once again after installing himself at the table.
The kind of house he was put up in was becoming familiar as well. It was a humble, simple dwelling, but stone-built, unlike most of the other buildings that were nothing more than mud or wooden shacks. The table and a few chairs were the only furniture in the room, the center of which was the hearth.
“Your Excellency must be tired.”
Joan stared at the cheese on his plate. To get here, he and his men had walked for several hours up rocky tracks in the chill of early morning, their feet muddy and wet from dew. Under the table, he rubbed his aching calf and crossed his right foot over his left to rub that too.
“Don’t call me ‘Excellency,’” he repeated yet again, “and I am not tired. God does not tolerate tiredness when it is a question of defending his name. We will start as soon as I have had something to eat. Gather the people in the square.”
Before he had left Barcelona, Joan had asked in Santa Caterina convent to consult the treatise that Pope Gregory the Ninth had written in 1231 describing the procedures to be adopted by itinerant inquisitors.
“Sinners! Repent!” First came the sermon to the people. The sixty or so inhabitants of the village who had gathered in the square lowered their heads when they heard the friar’s opening words. The black friar’s stern expression paralyzed them. “The fires of hell await you!” The first time he had spoken, he did not know whether he would be able to find the words to address them, but he soon discovered that the more he became aware of the power he had over these terrified peasants, the more easily the words came. “Not one of you will escape! God will not allow black sheep in his flock.” They had to speak out: heresy had to be brought to light. That was his task: to seek out the sins committed in secret, the ones only neighbors, friends, or spouses knew about...
“God knows this. He knows you. His all-seeing eye is upon you. Anyone who sees sin and does not denounce it will burn in the eternal fires, because it is even worse to tolerate sin than to commit it; he who sins may be forgiven, but he who hides sin ...” Having said this, he would study them closely: an uneasy shuffling here, a furtive glance there. They would be the first. “He who hides sin”—Joan fell silent again, saying nothing until he could see them quaking at his threatening words—“will never be forgiven.”
Fear. Fire, pain, sin, punishment... the black friar shouted and persisted in his diatribe until he controlled their minds; his grip over them began with this first sermon.
“You have a period of grace of three days,” he said finally. “Anyone who comes voluntarily to confess their guilt will be dealt with mercifully. After those three days ... the punishment will be exemplary.” He turned to the captain. “Investigate that blond woman over there, that barefoot man, and the one with the black belt. And that girl with the baby ...” Joan pointed them all out discreetly. “If they do not come forward themselves, you are to bring them to me, together with another three chosen at random.”
THROUGHOUT THE THREE days of grace, Joan remained seated, unmoving, behind the table in his lodging. With him were the scribe and the soldiers, who shifted from foot to foot as the hours slowly went by.
Only four people appeared to relieve their boredom: two men who had not fulfilled their obligation to attend mass, a woman who had disobeyed her husband on several occasions, and a child who poked his head, wide- eyed, around the door.
Someone was pushing him from behind, but the boy refused to enter the room properly and stood in the doorway, half-in and half-out.
“Come in, boy,” Joan urged him.
At this, the boy drew back, but once again a hand pushed him inside the room, then shut the door behind him.
“How old are you?” asked Joan.
The boy stared at the soldiers, at the scribe who had already begun to write, and at the black friar.
“Nine,” he said hesitantly.
“What is your name?”
“Alfons.”
