Cathedral of the Sea

“I haven’t—” Joanet apologized.

“I know, I know ...,” the priest interrupted him in a kindly fashion, stroking his head. “And you, what did you pray?”

“The Ave Maria,” Arnau replied.

“A wonderful prayer. Let’s go then,” the priest said, accompanying them to the church door.

“Father,” said Arnau once they were all outside, “can we come back?”

The priest smiled at them. “Of course, but I hope that by the time you do, you’ll have taught your brother to pray as well.” Joanet looked serious as the priest tapped him on both cheeks. “Come back whenever you like,” the priest added. “You will always be welcome.”

Angel started off toward the pile of large building stones. Arnau and Joanet followed him.

“Where are you going now?” he asked, turning back to them. The two boys looked at each other and shrugged. “You can’t come into our work area. If the overseer ...”

“The man with the stone?” Arnau butted in.

“No,” laughed Angel. “That was Ramon. He’s a bastaix.”

Joanet and Arnau both looked at him inquisitively.

“The bastaixos are the laborers of the sea; they carry goods from the beach to the merchants’ warehouses, or the other way round. They load and unload merchandise after the boatmen have brought it to the beach.”

“So they don’t work in Santa Maria?” asked Arnau.

“Yes, they work the hardest.” Angel laughed at their puzzled expressions. “They are poor people. They have little money, but they are among those who are most devoted to the Virgin of the Sea. They cannot contribute any funds to the new church, so their guild has promised they will transport the stones free from the royal quarry at Montjuic to here. They carry them all on their backs,” Angel said, his face showing no emotion. “They travel miles under the loads. Afterward, it takes two of us just to move them.”

Arnau remembered the huge stone that the bastaix had left on the ground.

“Of course they work for the Virgin!” Angel insisted. “More than anyone else. Now go and play,” he said, before continuing on his way.

10

“WHY DO THEY keep building the scaffolding higher and higher?”

Arnau pointed to the rear of Santa Maria church. Angel looked up and, his mouth full of bread and cheese, muttered an explanation neither of them could understand. Joanet burst out laughing, Arnau joined in, and in the end Angel himself could not avoid chuckling along with them, until he choked and the laughter turned into a coughing fit.

Arnau and Joanet went to Santa Maria every day. They entered the church and kneeled down. Urged on by his mother, Joanet had decided to learn to pray, and he repeated the phrases Arnau had taught him over and over again. Then, when the two of them split up, he would race to his mother’s window and tell her all he had prayed that day. Arnau talked to his mother, except when Father Albert (they had found out that was his name) appeared, in which case he joined Joanet in murmuring his devotions.

Whenever they left the church, they would stand some distance away and survey the carpenters, stonemasons, and masons at work on the new building. Afterward they would sit in the square waiting for Angel to have a break and join them to eat his bread and cheese. Father Albert treated them affectionately; the men working on Santa Maria always smiled at them; even the bastaixos, who came by bent under the weight of their stones, would glance over at the two little boys sitting next to the church.

“Why do they keep building the scaffolding higher?” Arnau asked a second time.

The three of them peered at the rear of the church, where the ten columns stood: eight of them in a semicircle and two more farther back. Beyond them, workmen had started to build the buttresses and walls that would form the new apse. The columns rose higher than the small Romanesque building, but the scaffolding went on up still farther into the sky. It was not surrounding anything, as though the workmen had gone crazy and were trying to make a stairway to heaven.

“I’ve no idea,” Angel admitted.

“None of that scaffolding is supporting anything.”

“No, but it will,” they suddenly heard a man’s firm voice say.

The three of them turned round. They had been so busy laughing and coughing they had not noticed that several men had gathered behind them. Some of them were dressed in fine clothes; others wore priests’ vestments, enriched with bejeweled gold crosses on their chests, big rings, and belts threaded with gold and silver.

Father Albert was watching from the church door. He came hurrying over to greet the newcomers. Angel leapt up, and choked once more on his bread. This was not the first time he had seen the man who had spoken to them, but he had rarely seen him in such splendid company. He was Berenguer de Montagut, the person in charge of the building work on Santa Maria de la Mar.

Arnau and Joanet also stood up. Father Albert joined the group, and bent to kiss the bishops’ rings.

“What will they support?”

Joanet’s question caught Father Albert just as he was stooping to kiss another ring: “Don’t speak until you’re spoken to,” his eyes implored him. One of the provosts made as though to continue on toward the church, but Berenguer de Montagut grasped Joanet by the shoulder and leaned down to talk to him.

“Children are often able to see things we miss,” he said out loud to his companions. “So I would not be surprised if these three have noticed something that has escaped our attention. So you want to know why we’re building this scaffolding, do you?” Glancing toward Father Albert for permission, Joanet nodded. “Do you see the tops of those columns? Well, from the top of each of them we are going to build six arches. The most important one of all will be the one that takes the weight of the new church’s apse.”