Guillem took silent note of all this.
BURNING THE BODY?
Nicolau Eimerich was still standing, hands pressed on the table, staring at Arnau. He was purple with rage.
“Your father,” he growled, “was a devil who roused the people to rebellion. That is why he was executed, and why you burned him.”
Nicolau ended by pointing an accusing finger at Arnau.
How did he know? There was only one person who knew what he had done ... The clerk’s quill scratched its way across the page. It was impossible. Not Joan ... Arnau could feel his legs buckling beneath him.
“Do you deny having burned your father’s body?” asked Berenguer d’Eril.
Joan could not have told anyone!
“Do you deny it?” Nicolau insisted, raising his voice.
The faces of the tribunal in front of him became a blur. Arnau thought he was going to be sick.
“We were hungry!” he shouted. “Do you know what it feels like to be hungry?” He saw his father’s purple face with its tongue lolling out, superimposed on those of the people watching him now. Joan? Why hadn’t he been to see him again? “We were hungry!” he shouted. Arnau could hear his father’s words: “If I were you, I wouldn’t accept it ...” “Have you ever been hungry?”
Arnau tried to throw himself on Nicolau, who was still standing there arrogantly challenging him, but before he could reach the table, he was grabbed by the soldiers and dragged back to the center of the chamber.
“Did you burn your father as a devil?” Nicolau shouted again.
“My father was not a devil!” Arnau replied, shouting and struggling to free himself from the soldiers.
“But you did burn his body.”
“Why did you do it, Joan? You are my brother, and Bernat ... Bernat always loved you like a son.” Arnau lowered his head and went limp in the soldiers’ hands. “Why?”
“Did your mother tell you to do it?”
Arnau could barely lift his head.
“Your mother is a witch who transmits the Devil’s sickness,” said the bishop.
What were they talking about?
“Your father killed a boy in order to set you free. Do you confess it?” howled Nicolau.
“What—” Arnau started to say.
“You,” Nicolau interrupted him, “you also killed a Christian boy. What were you planning to do with him?”
“Did your parents tell you to kill him?”
“Did you want his heart?” said Nicolau.
“How many other boys have you killed?”
“What are your relations with heretics?”
The inquisitor and the bishop assailed him with questions. Your father, your mother, boys, murders, hearts, heretics, Jews ... Joan! Arnau’s head fell onto his chest again. His whole body was quivering.
“Do you confess?” Nicolau rounded on him.
Arnau did not move. His interrogators were silent, as he hung in the arms of the soldiers. Eventually, Nicolau signaled to them to take him out of the chamber. Arnau could feel them dragging him away.
“Wait!” came the order from the inquisitor just as they were opening the doors. The guards turned back to him. “Arnau Estanyol!” he shouted. And again: “Arnau Estanyol!”
Arnau slowly raised his head and peered at Nicolau.
“You can take him out,” said the inquisitor once he had met Arnau’s gaze. “Take this down,” Arnau heard him instructing the clerk as he was bundled out of the room. “The prisoner did not deny any of the accusations made by this tribunal, and has avoided confessing by pretending to have fainted, the falseness of which has been discovered when, no longer under oath in the tribunal, the prisoner responded to calls for him to answer his name.”
The sound of the scratching quill followed Arnau all the way to the dungeons.
DESPITE THE INNKEEPER’S protests, Guillem gave instructions to his slaves to organize his move to the corn exchange, which was close to the Estanyer Inn. He left Mar behind, but he could not risk being recognized by Genis Puig. The slaves only shook their head when the innkeeper tried desperately to get them and their rich master to stay on. “What use to me are nobles who won’t pay?” he growled as he counted out the money the slaves had given him.
Guillem went straight from the Jewry to his new lodgings. None of the merchants staying in Barcelona knew of his former connections with Arnau.
“I have a business in Pisa,” he told a Sicilian trader who sat down to eat at the same table and showed an interest in him.
“What brings you to Barcelona?” he asked.
He almost said, “A friend who is in trouble,” then thought better of it. The Sicilian was a short, bald man with rough-hewn features. He said his name was Jacopo Lercado. Guillem had discussed the situation in Barcelona thoroughly with Jucef, but it was always a good idea to get another opinion.
