“Don’t touch me!” Francesca cried, coming out of her stupor.
“He’ll flay me alive!” Bernat protested, staring at her naked body.
“Leave me alone!”
They struggled, until finally Bernat had seized both her wrists and forced her upright. Francesca was still fighting him.
“Someone else will come!” he whispered. “Another man will be the one to force you!”
Her eyes opened wide in an accusing glare.
“He’ll have me flayed!” Bernat repeated.
Francesca still struggled to beat him off, but he flung himself on top of her. Her tears were not enough to dampen the sudden rush of desire he felt as he rubbed against her naked body. As he penetrated her, she gave a shriek that reached the highest heaven.
Her cries satisfied the soldier who had followed Bernat and was witnessing the whole scene shamelessly, head and shoulders thrust into the room.
Before Bernat had finished, Francesca gradually stopped resisting, and her howls turned to sobs. Bernat reached his climax to the sound of his wife’s tears.
Lorenc de Bellera also heard the screams from the second-floor window. Once his spy had confirmed that the marriage had been consummated, he called for the horses and he and his sinister troop left the farmhouse. Desolate and terrified, most of the wedding guests did the same.
Calm returned to the courtyard. Bernat was still sprawled across his wife. He had no idea what to do next. He realized he was still gripping her shoulders, and lifted his hands away. As he did so, he collapsed again on top of her. He pushed himself up and stared into Francesca’s eyes. They seemed to be staring straight through him. Any movement he made would press his body against hers once more, and he could not bear the thought of doing her more harm. He wished he could levitate then and there so that he could separate his body from hers without even touching it.
Eventually, after what seemed an eternity, Bernat pushed himself away and kneeled down beside her. He still did not know what to do for the best: to stand up, lie down beside her, get out of the room, or to try to justify himself ... He could not bear to see Francesca’s naked body, cruelly exposed on the pallet. He tried to get her to look at him, but her eyes were blank again. He looked down, and the sight of his own naked sex filled him with shame.
“I’m sorr—”
He was interrupted by a sudden movement from Francesca. Now she was staring straight at him. Bernat looked for some slight glimmer of understanding, but there was none.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. Francesca was still staring at him without the slightest sign of reacting. “I’m so sorry. He ... he was going to flay me alive,” he stammered.
In his mind’s eye, Bernat saw the lord of Navarcles standing with his arm outstretched, calling for the whip. He searched Francesca’s face: nothing. What he saw in her eyes frightened him still further: they were shouting in silence, as loudly as the screams she had uttered when he had flung himself on her.
Unwittingly, as though trying to make her understand he knew what she was going through, as if she were a little girl, he stretched out his hand toward her cheek.
“I ... ,” he started to say.
His hand never reached her. As it approached, the muscles of her whole body stiffened. Bernat lifted his hand to his own face, and burst into tears.
Francesca lay there, staring into space.
After a long while, Bernat stopped crying. He got to his feet, put on his hose, and disappeared down the ladder to the floor beneath. As soon as she could no longer hear his footsteps, Francesca got up and went over to the chest that was the only furniture in the room, to find some clothes. When she was dressed, she gently picked up all the things that had been torn from her, including the precious white linen smock. Folding it carefully so that the rips did not show, she stowed it in the chest.
2
FRANCESCA WANDERED ABOUT the farmhouse like a lost soul. She carried out all the domestic chores, but never said a word. The sad atmosphere she created soon spread to the farthest corners of the Estanyol family home.
Bernat had several times tried to apologize for what had happened. Once the terror of his wedding day had receded, he had tried to explain what he had felt more clearly: his fear of the lord’s cruelty, the consequences for both of them of refusing to obey his orders. Bernat repeated “I’m sorry” over and over again to Francesca, but she simply stared at him in silence, as though waiting for the moment when, without fail, Bernat’s argument led him to the same crux as ever: “If I hadn’t done it, another man would have come ...”At that point, he always fell silent; he knew there was no excuse, and his rape of her rose every time like an insurmountable barrier between them. The apologies, excuses, and silences slowly healed the wound in Bernat, if not in his wife, and his feelings of remorse were tempered by the daily round of work. Eventually, Bernat even resigned himself to Francesca’s stubborn refusal to talk.
At daybreak every morning, when he got up to start a hard day’s grind, he would stare out their bedroom window. He had always done this with his father, even in his last illness, the two of them leaning on the thick stone windowsill and peering up at the heavens to see what the day held in store. They would look out over their lands, which were clearly defined by the different crop growing in each field and extended right across the huge valley beyond the farmhouse. They watched the flight of the birds and listened closely to the noises the animals were making in their pens. These were moments of communion between father and son, and between the two of them and their land: the only occasions when Bernat’s father appeared to recover his sanity. Bernat had dreamed of being able to share similar moments with his wife, to be able to tell her all he had heard from his father, and his father from his own father, and so on back through the generations.
He had dreamed of being able to explain that these fertile lands had in the distant past been free of rent or service, and belonged entirely to the Estanyol family, who had worked there with great care and love. The fruits of their labors were entirely theirs, without their having to pay tithes or taxes or to give homage to any arrogant, unjust lord. He had dreamed of being able to share with her, his wife and the mother of the future inheritors of
