Cathedral of the Sea

“What was that you said?” shouted Grau when Bernat answered him with a brief “Where and what for?” “Where I say, and for whatever I wish,” he went on, nervously flinging his arms in the air.

“We are not your slaves, Grau.”

“You don’t have much choice.”

Bernat cleared his throat, then followed Jaume’s advice.

“I could go to the tribunal.”

Tense, shaken, Grau raised his small, skinny body out of his chair, but Bernat did not back down, however much he would have liked to have run from the room: the threat of the tribunal worked wonders.

HE AND HIS son would look after the horses that Grau had been forced to buy along with the mansion. “You can’t possibly have empty stables,” his father-in-law had commented in passing, as though talking to a slow child. Grau was busy adding up all the costs in his mind. “My daughter Isabel has always had horses,” the other man added.

But the most important thing for Bernat was the good wage he obtained for himself and for Arnau, who was also going to start working with the horses. They could live outside the mansion, in a room of their own, without slaves or apprentices. He and his son would have enough money to get by.

It was Grau himself who urged Bernat to annul Arnau’s existing contract as a potter’s apprentice and to sign a new one.

EVER SINCE HE had been granted the status of a freeman, Bernat had seldom left Grau’s workshop. Whenever he had done so, it had been on his own or with Arnau. It did not seem as though there were any outstanding warrants against him: his name was registered on the list of Barcelona citizens. Every time he went out into the street, he reassured himself, thinking that they would surely have come for him by now. What he most liked was to walk down to the beach and join the dozens of men who worked on the sea. He would stand staring out at the horizon, feeling the sea breeze on his face and enjoying the tangy smells from the beach, the boats, the tar ...

It was almost ten years since he had struck the lad at the forge. He hoped he had not killed him. Arnau and Joanet were scampering around him, staring up at him bright-eyed, smiles on their lips.

“Our own house!” Arnau had shouted earlier. “Let’s live in La Ribera, please!”

“I’m afraid it will be only one room,” Bernat had tried to explain, but his son went on smiling as though they were moving to the city’s grandest palace.

“It’s not a bad area,” Jaume said when Bernat told him his son’s suggestion. “You can find a good room there.”

That was where the three of them were heading now. The boys were running around as usual; Bernat was carrying their few belongings.

On the way down to Santa Maria church, the two boys never stopped greeting people they met.

“This is my father!” Arnau shouted to a bastaix weighed down under a sack of grain, pointing to Bernat, who was some twenty yards behind them.

The bastaix smiled but continued walking, bent double under his load. Arnau turned and started to run back toward his father, but then realized Joanet was not following him.

“Come on,” he said, waving to him.

Joaner shook his head.

“What’s wrong?”

The little boy lowered his head.

“He is your father,” he muttered. “What will become of me now?”

He was right. Everyone they knew thought they were brothers. Arnau had not considered that.

“Come on, run with me,” he said, tugging at Joanet’s sleeve.

Bernat watched them approach: Arnau was pulling at Joanet, who seemed reluctant. “Congratulations for your sons,” said the bastaix as he walked past. Bernat smiled. The two boys had been playing together for more than a year now. What about little Joanet’s mother? Bernat imagined him sitting on the crate, having his head stroked by an arm that had no face. A lump rose in his throat.

“Father—” Arnau began to say when they reached him.

Joanet hid behind his friend.

“Boys,” Bernat interrupted his son, “I think that...”

“Father, how would you like to be Joanet’s father too?” Arnau said hurriedly.

Bernat saw the smaller boy peep out from behind Arnau’s back.

“Come here, Joanet,” said Bernat. “Would you like to be my son?” he asked, as the boy approached.

Joanet’s face lit up.

“Does that mean yes?”

The boy clung to his leg. Arnau beamed at him.

“Now go and play,” said Bernat, his voice choking with emotion.

THE BOYS TOOK Bernat to meet Father Albert.

“I’m sure he can help us,” said Arnau. Joanet nodded.

“This is our father!” the smaller boy said, rushing in front of Arnau and repeating the words he had been telling everyone on their way to the church, even those they knew only by sight.

Father Albert asked the boys to leave them for a while. He offered Bernat a cup of sweet wine while he