Cathedral of the Sea

well.

“Don’t worry,” he said hesitantly. “We’ll leave and then you—”

“Mariona and I have been thinking.” Pere interrupted him. “If you and Joan accept, perhaps you could sleep down here by the fire.” Arnau’s eyes opened wide. “That way ... that way we could rent the room to a family and be able to pay the annual rent. You would only have to find two pallets for yourselves. What do you think?”

Arnau’s face lit up. His lips began to tremble.

“Does that mean yes?” Pere prompted him.

Arnau steadied his mouth and nodded enthusiastically.

“Now IT’S TIME we helped the Virgin!” one of the guild aldermen shouted.

Arnau felt the hairs prickle on his arms and legs.

That day there were no ships to load or unload. The sea in the port was dotted with small fishing boats. The bastaixos had gathered on the beach as usual. The sun was climbing in the sky, heralding a fine spring day.

This was the first time since Arnau had become a bastaix at the start of the seagoing season that they had been able to spend a day working for Santa Maria.

“We’ll help the Virgin!” the group of bastaixos shouted.

Arnau surveyed his companions: their drowsy faces were suddenly all smiles. Some of them swung their arms back and forward to loosen their back muscles. Arnau recalled when he used to give them water, and see them going by, bent double under the weight of the enormous stones. Would he be up to it? Fear tightened his muscles, and he began to exercise like the others.

“This is your first time, isn’t it?” said Ramon, congratulating him. Arnau said nothing, and allowed his arms to drop to his sides. “Don’t worry, my lad,” Ramon added, resting his hand on his shoulder and encouraging him to catch up with the others, who were already leaving the beach. “Remember that when you are carrying stones for the Virgin, she carries part of the weight.”

Arnau looked at him.

“It’s true,” the bastaix insisted with a smile. “You’ll discover that today.”

They started from Santa Clara, at the eastern end of the city, and had to cross the entire city, then out of the walls and up to the royal quarry at La Roca, in Montjuic. Arnau walked without talking: from time to time he could sense that some of the others were watching him. They left La Ribera behind, then the exchange and the Forment storehouse. As they passed by the angel fountain, Arnau could see the women waiting to fill their pitchers; many of them had let him and Joan in when they came running up with the waterskin. People waved as they went by. Some children ran and jumped around the group of men, whispering and pointing at Arnau with respect. The bastaixos left behind the gates of the shipyard and reached the Framenors convent at the western end of the city. It was here that the city walls petered out; beyond them were the unfinished royal dockyards and, farther on still, open countryside and vegetable plots: San Nicolau, San Bertran, and San Pau del Camp. This was where the track up to the quarry began.

Before they could reach it, however, the bastaixos had to cross Cagalell. The stench from the city’s waste hit them long before they could see it.

“They’re draining it,” one of the men said when the smell overwhelmed them.

Most of the others agreed.

“It wouldn’t smell so bad if they weren’t,” another bastaix explained.

Cagalell was a pond that formed at the mouth of the gully by the walls. It was here that all the waste and sewage from the city accumulated. The ground was so rough it could not run off properly across the beach, so the water lay stagnant until a city workman dug a channel through and pushed the waste out into the sea. That was when Cagalell smelled its worst.

They skirted round it until they came to a narrow part they could jump across, then walked on through the fields until they reached the slopes of Montjuic.

“How do we get back across Cagalell?” asked Arnau, pointing to the foul-smelling stream.

“I’ve never yet met anybody who could jump with a block of stone on his back,” laughed Ramon.

As they climbed up to the royal quarry, Arnau peered back down at the city. It looked far, far below. How was he going to walk all that way with a huge stone on his back? He could feel his legs giving way just at the thought of it, but he ran to catch up with the rest of the group, who were still talking and laughing as they climbed ahead of him.

They went round a bend, and there the royal quarry lay in front of them. Arnau could not help gasping in astonishment. It was like Plaza del Blat or any of the other city markets, except that there were no women! On a flat expanse of ground, the king’s officers were dealing with everyone who had come seeking stone. Carts and mule trains were lined up on one side, where the walls of the mountain had not yet been excavated. The rest looked as though it had been sliced through, and was a mass of glistening rock. Countless stonemasons were dangerously levering off huge blocks of stone; down on the flat ground others cut them into smaller stones.

The bastaixos were greeted with great affection by all those waiting for stones. While their leaders talked to the quarry officials, the others embraced or shook hands with the people waiting. They laughed and joked together, and skins of wine or water were raised.

Arnau could not help watching the stonecutters at work. He was equally fascinated by the way the laborers loaded the carts and mules, always supervised by a clerk noting everything down. Just as in the markets, people were talking or waiting their turn impatiently.

“You weren’t expecting anything like this, were you?”

Arnau turned and saw Ramon handing back a wineskin. He shook his head.

“Who is all this stone for?”

“Oh!” said Ramon, then began to reel off the list: “for the cathedral, for Santa Maria del Pi, Santa Anna, for