Bernat saw a gleam of hope appear in his son’s eyes. They widened as if he were trying to absorb strength from his father’s words. “I promised you freedom, Arnau. I must give it to you, and I will. Don’t give up so quickly, little one.”
Over the next few days, Bernat roamed the streets in search of freedom. At first, once he had finished his work in Grau’s stables, Tomas followed him, without even bothering to keep hidden. Soon, though, he stopped spying on him: the baroness understood she had no influence over artisans, small traders, or builders.
“It’ll be hard for him to find anything,” her husband tried to reassure his wife when she came to complain about the peasant’s attitude.
“Why do you say that?” she asked him.
“Because he won’t find work. Barcelona is suffering the consequences of a lack of planning.” The baroness urged him to continue; Grau was never wrong in his judgments. “The last few years’ harvests have been disastrous,” he explained. “There are too many people in the countryside, so what little they do harvest never reaches the cities. They eat it all themselves.”
“But Catalonia is big,” said the baroness.
“Make no mistake, my dear. Catalonia may be big, but for many years now the peasants have not grown cereals, which is what is needed. Nowadays they produce linen, grapes, olives, or dried fruit, but not cereals. The change has made their lords rich, and we merchants have done very well out of it too, but the situation is becoming impossible. Until now we’ve been able to eat grain from Sicily and Sardinia, but the war with Genoa has put a stop to that. Bernat will not find work, but all of us, we nobles included, are going to face problems. And all because of a few useless noblemen...”
“How can you talk like that?” the baroness cut in, feeling herself under attack.
“Look at it this way, my love.” Grau was serious in his attempt to explain. “We earn our livelihood from trade, and we’ve done very well out of it. We invest part of what we earn in our own businesses. We don’t use the same ships we had ten years ago, and that’s why we go on making money. But the noble landowners have not invested a thing in their lands or their working methods: they are still using the same implements and techniques as the Romans did. The Romans! They should let their fields lie fallow every two or three years; that way they could produce two or three times as much as they do. But those noble landlords you are so keen to defend never think of the future; all they want is easy money. They are the ones who will be the ruin of Catalonia.”
“Things can’t be as bad as all that,” the baroness insisted.
“Have you any idea how much a sack of wheat costs?” When his wife made no reply, Grau shook his head and went on: “Close to a hundred shillings. Do you know what the normal price is?” This time, he did not wait for her reply. “Ten shillings unground, sixteen ground. So a sack has increased tenfold in price!”
“What will we eat then?” his wife asked, unable to conceal her preoccupation.
“You don’t understand. We’ll still be able to buy wheat... if there is any, because there could come a moment when it runs out—if we haven’t got there already. The problem is that whereas wheat has gone up ten times in price, ordinary people are still receiving the same wages—”
“So we will have wheat,” his wife butted in.
“Yes, but—”
“And Bernat will not be able to find work.”
“I don’t think so, but—”
“Well, that’s all that matters to me,” the baroness said. With that, she turned her back on him, weary of listening to all his explanations.
“Something terrible is brewing,” Grau said when his wife could no longer hear.
A bad year. Bernat was tired of hearing that excuse time and again. Wherever he tried to find work, the bad year was to blame. “I’ve had to lay off half my apprentices: how can I offer you work?” one artisan told him. “This is a bad year. I can’t even feed my children,” said another. “Haven’t you heard?” a third man told him. “This is a bad year; I’ve had to spend half my savings just to feed my family. Normally a twentieth would have been enough.” “How could I not have heard?” Bernat thought, but went on searching until winter and the cold weather came on. Then there were some places where he did not even dare ask. The children went hungry; their parents did not eat so they could give them something; and smallpox, typhus, and diphtheria began to make their deadly appearance.
Arnau looked into Bernat’s money bag when his father was at work. At first he checked it each week, but soon he looked every day, often more than once. He could clearly see that their reserves were rapidly being eaten up.
“What is the price of freedom?” he asked Joan one day as they were both praying to the Virgin.
“Saint Gregory says that at the beginning all men were born equal and were therefore free.” Joan spoke in a quiet, steady voice, as though repeating a lesson. “But it was those men who had been born free who for their own good chose to submit to a lord who would take care of them. They lost part of their freedom, but gained a lord who would take care of them.”
Arnau listened to him, staring intently at the Virgin’s statue. “Why don’t you smile for me? Saint Gregory... Whenever did Saint Gregory have an empty purse like my father’s?”
“Joan.”
“What is it?”
“What do you think I should do?”
“It’s your decision.”
“But what do you think?”
“I’ve already told you. It was the freemen who decided they wanted a lord to take care of them.”
That same day, without telling his father, Arnau presented himself at Grau Puig’s mansion. In order not to be seen from the stables, he slipped in through the kitchen. There he found Estranya, as huge as ever, as if hunger
