places that had been part of his life for so long. Little seemed to have changed during the five years Guillem had been in Pisa. Despite the crisis, the city teemed with activity. Barcelona was still open to the sea, defended only by the
“Their work is essential: they are forbidden by law to be paid by how much they do,” Arnau had explained the first time. That was why the consul wanted to talk to them, to ensure that none of the caulkers had been forced by necessity to do his work hurriedly, and so put the fleet at risk.
Now Guillem watched a caulker on his knees carefully checking the seal he had just finished on a ship’s hull. Seeing him made Guillem close his eyes. He tightened his mouth and shook his head. He and Arnau had fought alongside each other so often, and now his friend was hiding in a distant cove, waiting for the inquisitor to sentence him to a lesser punishment. Christians! At least he had Mar with him ... his little child. Guillem had not been surprised when the captain of the catboat had appeared at the corn exchange and explained what had happened with Mar and Arnau. His little child!
“Good luck to you, my pretty one,” he had murmured.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing, nothing. You did the right thing. Put to sea again, and come back in a couple of days.”
The first day, he had had no news from Eimerich. On the second, he went back into Barcelona. He could not just sit there waiting; he left his servants in the exchange, with orders to find him if anyone appeared asking for him.
The merchants’ districts were exactly the same. He could walk through the city with his eyes closed, letting himself be guided by the distinctive smells from each of them. The cathedral, like Santa Maria or the Pi church, was still under construction, although work on the shrine to the Virgin of the Sea was much further advanced. Santa Clara and Santa Anna were also covered in scaffolding. Guillem paused in front of each church and watched the carpenters and masons hard at work. What about the seawall? And the secure harbor? How strange Christians were.
On the third day, one of his servants came panting up to him. “Someone at the corn exchange is asking for you.”
“Have you given way then, Nicolau?” Guillem wondered as he hurried back.
NICOLAU EIMERICH SIGNED the Inquisition’s sentence with Guillem standing on the far side of the table. He added his seal, and handed it over in silence.
Guillem picked it off the table and began to read it.
“Read the end. That’s all you need bother with,” the grand inquisitor urged him.
He had forced the clerk to work all night, and had no intention of spending all day waiting for this infidel to read the document through.
Guillem peered at him over the top of the parchment and carried on reading the inquisitor’s arguments. So Jaume de Bellera and Genis Puig had withdrawn their charges: how had Nicolau managed to achieve that? Margarida Puig’s testimony had been thrown into doubt because the tribunal had discovered that her family had been ruined in dealings with Arnau. As for Eleonor ... she had refused to accept the surrender and submission every wife ought to show her lord and master!
In addition, Eleonor claimed that the accused had publicly embraced a Jewish woman with whom he was suspected of having carnal relations. As witnesses, she cited Nicolau himself and Bishop Berenguer d‘Eril. Guillem looked up again at Nicolau; the inquisitor held his gaze. “It is not true,” Nicolau had written, “that the accused embraced a Jewish woman on the occasion Dona Eleonor was referring to.” Neither he nor Berenguer d’Eril, who had also signed the document—at this point, Guillem did turn to the last sheet to confirm the bishop’s signature and seal—could support this charge. The smoke, the flames, the noise, the crowd’s passion—Nicolau had written —could have led a woman who was by nature weak to have thought this was what she had seen. And since the accusation made by Dona Eleonor regarding Arnau’s relationship with this Jewish woman was obviously false, little credibility could be afforded to the rest of her testimony.
Guillem smiled.
This meant that the only actions that could be held against Arnau were those described by the priests of Santa Maria de la Mar. The blasphemy had been admitted by the prisoner, but he had repented of it in front of the whole tribunal, and this was the ultimate goal of every trial held by the Inquisition. For this reason, Arnau Estanyol was sentenced to pay a penalty consisting of the seizure of all his goods, and to do penance every Sunday for a year outside Santa Maria de la Mar, wearing the cloak of repentance that all those found guilty by the Inquisition were obliged to wear.
Guillem finished reading all the grandiloquent legal formulas, then checked that the document was properly signed and sealed by the grand inquisitor and the bishop. He had done it!
He rolled up the parchment, then searched in his clothes for the bill of payment signed by Abraham Levi. He handed it to Nicolau and watched in silence as he read it. The document signified Arnau’s ruin, but guaranteed his freedom and his life. In any case, Guillem would never have been able to explain to Arnau where the money had come from, or why he had hidden the piece of paper for so many years.
58
ARNAU SLEPT THE rest of that day. At nightfall, Mar lit a fire with twigs and the wood the fishermen had collected in the hut. The sea was calm. Mar looked up at the stars coming out in the night sky. Then she peered out at the cliffs surrounding the cove: the moonlight was playing here and there on the edges of the rocks, creating fantastic shapes.
She breathed in the silence and savored the calm. The world did not exist. Barcelona did not exist. Nor did the Inquisition, or Eleonor or Joan. There was only her ... and Arnau.
Around midnight she heard sounds from inside the hut. She got up to see what it was, and saw Arnau emerging into the moonlight. They stood in silence a few steps from each other.
