Cathedral of the Sea

him.

“This isn’t like giving people water,” one of them said. The others laughed.

“Here,” said Ramon. “It’s the smallest we could find in the guild.”

Arnau took the headpiece carefully.

“Don’t worry. It won’t snap!” laughed one of the bastaixos when he saw how gently Arnau was holding it.

“Of course not!” thought Arnau, smiling back at him. “How could it?”

He put the pad on the support and made sure the leather thongs fit round his forehead.

Ramon made sure the support was in the right place.

“Good,” he said, patting Arnau on the back. “All you need is the callus.”

“What callus?” Arnau started to ask, but just at that moment the arrival of the guild aldermen drew everyone’s attention.

“They can’t agree,” one of the aldermen explained. All the bastaixos, including Arnau, looked a little farther down the beach, where a group of finely dressed men were arguing. “Galcera Marquet wants his war galleys to be loaded first, but the merchants want their two ships unloaded beforehand. So we have to wait.”

The men muttered among themselves; many of them sat down on the sand. Arnau sat next to Ramon, the leather strap still on his forehead.

“It won’t break, Arnau,” the bastaix said, pointing to it, “but don’t get any sand in it; that would hurt when you lift your load.”

The boy took off the headpiece and put it away carefully, making sure no sand got in it.

“What’s the problem?” he asked Ramon. “We can unload or load first one lot, then the other.”

“Nobody wants to be in Barcelona longer than necessary. If a storm blew up, all the boats would be in peril, defenseless.”

Arnau surveyed the port, from Puig de les Falsies round to Santa Clara, then turned his gaze on the group of men who were still arguing.

“The city councillor is in charge, isn’t he?”

Ramon laughed and ruffled his hair.

“In Barcelona it’s the merchants who are in charge. They are the ones who have paid for the royal men-o’- war.”

In the end, the dispute was settled with a compromise: the bastaixos would first go and collect the supplies for the royal galleys from the city, while the small boats unloaded the merchant ships. The bastaixos ought to be back before the others had reached the shore with the ships’ goods, which would be left under cover in a suitable place rather than immediately distributed to their owners’ storehouses. The boatmen would take the supplies out to the warships while the bastaixos went back for more, then go on from them to the merchant ships to pick up the goods there. This would be repeated until the process was complete, with the warships loaded and the others empty. After that, the goods would be distributed to their corresponding storehouses, and if there was any time left, the merchant ships would be loaded again.

Once the agreement had been struck, all the men set to work. Different groups of bastaixos headed into Barcelona and the city warehouses, where the supplies for the crews and oarsmen of the galleys were kept. The boatmen headed out to the recently arrived merchant ships and began to unload their cargoes, which could not be taken onshore directly because of the lack of a harbor.

Each boat, catboat, cog, or barge had a crew of three or four men: the boatman and, depending on the guild, slaves or freemen who were paid a wage. The boatmen from the Sant Pere guild, the oldest and richest in the city, used two slaves per boat, as stipulated in their ordinances. Those in the more recent and less wealthy guild of Santa Maria had only paid hands. Whoever was in the crew, the operation to load and unload the cargoes was slow and cautious, even when the sea was calm, because the boatmen were held responsible by the ship owners for any loss or damage to their goods. They could even be sent to jail if they could not pay the compensation demanded.

When the sea grew rough in the port of Barcelona, things became even more complicated, not only for the boatmen but for everyone involved in the sea trade. First because the boatmen could refuse to go out and unload the cargo (which they were not allowed to do in fine weather) unless a special price was agreed upon with the owner. But it was the owners, captains, and even the crews of the ships who were most affected by storms. There were severe penalties if they left their ship before the cargo had been completely taken off; and the owner or his clerk, who were the only ones allowed off the ship, had to return at the first sign of any tempest.

So while the boatmen began to unload the first merchant ship, the bastaixos, divided into groups by their leaders, began to transfer the supplies for the galleys from different storehouses in the city. Arnau was put with Ramon, to whom the alderman gave a meaningful look.

They walked down the shoreline to the doors of the Forment, the city’s grain warehouse. It had been heavily guarded by soldiers since the popular uprising. When they reached it, Arnau tried as much as possible to hide behind Ramon, but the soldiers soon saw there was a young lad among all the robust men.

“What’s this fellow going to carry?” one of them asked, pointing to him and laughing.

When he saw all the soldiers staring at him, Arnau felt his stomach churn, and tried to hide even more behind Ramon, but the bastaix grasped him by his shoulder, put the leather headpiece on his forehead, and answered the soldier in a similarly jocular tone. “It’s time he started work!” he shouted. “He’s fourteen and has to help his family.”

The soldiers nodded and stepped aside. Arnau walked between them, head down. As he entered the warehouse, the smell of grain hit him. The beams of sunlight filtering through the windows picked out the particles of fine dust that soon made Arnau and many other bastaixos cough.

“Before the war against Genoa,” Ramon told him, stretching out his hand in a sweeping gesture as though