Cathedral of the Sea

which he was still holding, “this can be your bastaix knife. Father, write that in the book too, so that the boy has no problems of any kind.”

Arnau could feel the priest’s hand gripping his shoulder. He did not know what to say, but he smiled his thanks to the stone carriers. He was a bastaix! If only his father could see him!

18

“WHO WAS IT? Do you know him, lad?”

The noise of the soldiers running and shouting as they chased Arnau still filled the square, but all Joan could hear was the burning crackle of Bernat’s body above him.

The captain of the guard had stayed near the scaffold. He shook Joan and asked again: “Do you know who it was?”

Joan was transfixed by the sight of the man who had been a father to him burning like a torch.

The captain shook Joan until he turned toward him. He was still staring blindly ahead of him, and his teeth were chattering.

“Who was it? Why did he burn your father?”

Joan did not even hear the question. His whole body started to shake.

“He can’t speak,” said the woman who had urged Arnau to run off. It was she who had pulled Joan away from the flames, and had recognized Arnau as the boy who had been sitting guard over the hanged man all that afternoon. “If I only dared do the same,” she thought, “my husband’s body wouldn’t be left to rot on the walls, to be pecked at by the birds.” Yes, that lad had done something all the relatives there wished they had done, and the captain ... he had come on duty only that night, so he could not have recognized Arnau: he thought the man’s son must be this one. The woman put her arms round Joan and hugged him tight.

“I need to know who set fire to him,” the captain insisted.

“What does it matter?” the woman murmured, feeling Joan trembling uncontrollably in her embrace. “This boy is half-dead with fear and hunger.”

The captain rolled his eyes, then slowly nodded. Hunger! He himself had lost an infant child: the boy had grown thinner and thinner until a simple fever had been enough to carry him off. His wife used to hold him just as this woman was doing now. He used to stare at the two of them: his wife in tears, the little boy pressing up against her, desperate for warmth...

“Take him home,” the captain told her.

“Hunger,” he muttered, turning to look at Bernat’s burning corpse, “Those cursed Genoese!”

DAWN HAD BROKEN over the city.

“Joan!” shouted Arnau as soon as he opened the door.

Pere and Mariona, sitting close to the hearth, motioned to him to be quiet.

“He’s asleep,” said Mariona.

The woman in the square had brought him home and told them what had happened. The two old folks cosseted him until he fell asleep, then went to sit by the fireside.

“What will become of them?” Mariona asked her husband. “Without Bernat, the boy will never survive in the stables.”

“And we won’t be able to feed them,” thought Pere. They could not afford to let them keep the room without paying, or to feed them every day. It was then that he noticed how Arnau’s eyes were shining. His father had just been executed! His body had been burned—so why was he looking so excited?

“I’m a bastaix!” Arnau announced, heading for the few cold scraps left in the pot from the previous evening.

The two old folks looked at each other, and then at the boy, who was eating directly from the ladle, his back to them. He was starving! The lack of grain had affected him, as it had all Barcelona. How was such a puny boy going to be able to carry those heavy loads?

Mariona looked across at her husband, shaking her head.

“God will find a way,” Pere said.

“What did you say?” asked Arnau, turning to face them, his mouth full of food.

“Nothing, my lad, nothing.”

“I have to go,” said Arnau, picking up a piece of stale bread and biting off a chunk. His wish to tell them all that had happened in the square was outweighed by his desire to join his new companions. He said: “When Joan wakes up, tell him where I’ve gone.”

IN APRIL THE ships put out to sea again, after being hauled up on the beach since October. The days grew longer, and the big trading vessels began to enter and leave the city. No one involved—the merchants, owners, pilots—wanted to spend longer than was strictly necessary in the dangerous port of Barcelona.

Before he joined the group of bastaixos waiting on the shore, Arnau stared out to sea. It had always been there, but when he had been with his father they had turned their backs on it after a few steps. Today he looked at it with different eyes: it was going to be his livelihood. The port was filled with countless small craft, two big ships that had just arrived, and a fleet of six enormous men-o’-war, with 260 small boats and twenty-six rows of oarsmen each.

Arnau had heard of this fleet; it was Barcelona itself that had paid for it to help King Alfonso in his war against Genoa, and the city’s fourth councillor, Galcera Marquet, was in command. Only victory over Genoa could open the trade routes again and guarantee the Catalan capital’s prosperity: that was why the city had shown the king such generosity.

“You won’t let us down, will you, lad?” someone said as he stood on the shore. Arnau turned and saw it was one of the guild aldermen. “Come on,” the man said, hurrying on to where the other guild members had congregated.

Arnau followed him. When they reached the group, all the bastaixos smiled at