ALEDIS HAD TOLD her she would give him the message.
“Don’t worry,” she had insisted. “Arnau will know you are here, waiting for him.”
“Tell him I love him,” Mar shouted after Aledis as she began to cross Plaza de la Llana.
From the doorway, Mar saw the widow turn back and smile at her. Once Aledis was out of sight, Mar left the inn. She had thought about it on the journey from Mataro; again, when they had not been allowed to see Arnau; and that night over and over again. She left Plaza de la Llana and went part of the way down Calle Boria. She passed in front of the Capilla d’en Marcus and turned right. She came to a halt at the start of Calle de Montcada and stood for a few minutes looking at the noble palaces lining the street.
“My lady!” exclaimed Pere, Eleonor’s aged servant, as he opened one of the big gates to Arnau’s palace. “What a joy to see you again. It’s been such a long time ...” Pere fell silent, and nervously motioned her to step into the cobbled yard. “What brings you here?”
“I’ve come to see Dona Eleonor.”
Pere nodded and disappeared.
Mar was overwhelmed by her memories. Everything looked the same: the cool, clean yard with its gleaming cobblestones; the stables opposite; and to the right the impressive staircase leading up to the principal rooms. This was where Pere had headed.
He came back down the stairs looking disturbed.
“My lady will not see you.”
Mar looked up at the first floor of the palace. A shadow flitted behind one of the windows. When had she been in this situation before? When ... ? She looked up again at the windows.
“Once before,” she muttered up toward the windows, while Pere looked on, unable to offer any words of comfort, “I have lived through this scene. Arnau won that battle, Eleonor. I’m warning you: he has paid his debt to you in full.”
53
As THE SOLDIERS escorted him along the endless high corridors of the bishop’s palace, the noise of their swords and leather straps echoed all around them. The group marched along, the captain at its head, two soldiers in front of Arnau, and another two behind. When they had reached the top of the passage up from the dungeons, Arnau had halted to get used to the light streaming into the palace, until a sharp blow in the middle of his back forced him to keep pace with the soldiers.
Arnau passed by friars, priests, and scribes, all of them squeezing against the walls to let him and his guard through. Nobody had wanted to answer his question: the jailer had come into the dungeon and undone his chains. “Where are you taking me?” A Dominican in black crossed himself as he went by; another raised a crucifix. The soldiers marched on without paying any attention. For days now, Arnau had heard nothing from Joan or the brown-eyed woman: where had he seen those eyes before? He asked the old crone in the dungeon but got no reply. “Who was that woman?” he had shouted four times at least. Some of the shadows chained to the walls had groaned; others did not stir. Nor did the old woman, and yet, when the jailer pushed him out of the dungeon, Arnau thought he saw her shifting nervously.
Arnau bumped into the back of one of the soldiers in front of him. They had come to a halt outside an imposing double door. The soldier pushed him back, while the captain banged on the wooden panel. The doors opened, and the escort marched into a huge chamber. The walls were hung with rich tapestries. The soldiers accompanied Arnau to the center of the room, then returned to stand guard at the door.
Sitting behind an elaborately carved table, seven men were staring at him. Nicolau Eimerich, the grand inquisitor, sat in the middle, together with Berenguer d’Eril, the bishop of Barcelona. Both of them were wearing fine robes embroidered in gold. To the inquisitor’s left sat the Holy Office clerk; Arnau had seen him on occasion, but had never had any dealings with the man. On either side sat two black-robed Dominican friars, whom Arnau did not know.
Arnau looked steadily at the members of the tribunal until one of the friars turned away in disgust. Arnau raised a hand to his face: it was covered in a greasy beard that had grown during his days in the dungeon. His torn clothes had lost all their original color. He was barefoot, and his feet, hands, and nails were caked with black dirt. He stank. He himself found his smell unbearable.
Eimerich smiled when he saw Arnau reacting to his own sorry state.
“FIRST THEY WILL get him to swear on the four gospels,” Joan explained to Aledis as they sat round a table at the inn. “The trial could last days, or even months,” he had already told them, when they had urged him to go to the bishop’s palace. “It’s better to wait at the inn.”
“Will there be someone to defend him?” asked Mar.
Joan shook his head wearily. “He will be appointed a lawyer ... but that person is not allowed to defend him.”
“Why not?” the two women asked together.
“It is forbidden for lawyers and notaries,” Joan recited, “to aid heretics, to advise or support them, or to believe their word and defend them.” Mar and Aledis looked nonplussed. “That’s what the bull by Pope Innocent says.”
“What do they do then?” asked Mar.
“The lawyer’s task is to obtain the heretic’s voluntary confession; if he were to defend a heretic, he would be defending heresy.”
“I HAVE NOTHING to confess,” Arnau told the young priest who had been appointed as his lawyer.
“He’s an expert in civil and canon law,” said Nicolau Eimerich, “and also a passionate believer,” he added with a smile.
The priest spread his arms wide in a helpless gesture, in the same way he had done in the dungeon, when he had encouraged Arnau to confess his heresy. “You ought to do so,” he had said, “and put your faith in the tribunal’s mercy.” Now he repeated the same gesture—how often had he done that in the past as a lawyer for heretics?—and then at a sign from Eimerich, he withdrew from the chamber.
“AFTER THAT,” JOAN continued at Aledis’s prompting, “they will ask him to name his enemies.”
