Cathedral of the Sea

“That’s in the past too,” the priest insisted. “Besides,” he added, “I’ve found a good dowry for your daughter.” Gasto Segura, who thought the conversation had already finished, suddenly turned back to hear what the priest had to say. “It will allow her to buy a house ...”

Gasto interrupted him once more: “My daughter doesn’t need any rich man’s charity! Keep your wiles for others!”

When he heard Father Albert’s words, Arnau stared out to sea. Moonlight was shimmering across the water from horizon to shore, dying in the foam of the waves breaking on the beach.

Father Albert let the lapping of the waves calm them. What if Arnau asked the reasons behind the tanner’s refusal? What could he tell him?“

“Why?” stammered Arnau, still staring out at the horizon.

“Gasto Segura is ... a very strange man.” Father Albert could not break the boy’s heart still further. “He wants a nobleman to marry his daughter! How can a mere tanner aspire to something like that?”

A nobleman. Had the lad believed him? Nobody should feel belittled by the nobility. Even the waves lapping patiently, endlessly, on the shore seemed to be waiting for Arnau’s reply.

A sob echoed along the beach.

Father Albert put his arm round Arnau’s shoulder. He could feel his body shaking. He put his other arm round Joan, and the three of them stood gazing out to sea.

“You will find a good wife,” said the priest after a while.

“Not like her,” thought Arnau.

PART THREE

Chained to Passion

21

Second Sunday in July 1339

Church of Santa Maria de la Mar

Barcelona

FOUR YEARS HAD passed since Gasto Seguro refused to give his daughter’s hand in marriage to Arnau the bastaix. A few months later, Aledis was married off to an old master tanner, a widower for whom his young bride’s charms more than made up for her lack of dowry. Until the moment she was given away, Aledis never left her mother’s sight.

Arnau himself was now a tall, strong, and good-looking young man of eighteen. During those four years he had lived from and for the guild of bastaixos, the church of Santa Maria, and his brother Joan. He carried more than his share of goods and stone blocks; he gave money to the guild, and attended religious services devoutly. But he had not married, and the guild aldermen were worried that a lusty young man like him might fall into temptation, which would mean they would have to expel him from the brotherhood.

Yet Arnau would not hear of marrying. When the priest told him Gasto wanted nothing to do with him, Arnau stood staring at the sea, thinking of the women who had been part of his life: he had not even known who his mother was; Guiamona had shown him affection, but then turned against him; Habiba had vanished in a welter of blood and pain (at night Arnau often still dreamed of Grau’s whip lashing her naked body); Estranya had treated him like a slave; Margarida had laughed at him at his moment of greatest humiliation; and Aledis—what could he say about her? It was thanks to her that he had discovered the man inside him, but she had soon abandoned him.

“I have to take care of my brother,” he told the aldermen whenever they brought the matter up. “You know he has dedicated his life to the church, to serve God,” he would say while they thought of how to persuade him. “What better aim could there be in life?”

At this the aldermen invariably fell silent.

This was how Arnau lived throughout those four years: calmly, wrapped up in his work, Santa Maria, and above all, Joan.

That second Sunday in July 1339 was a historic day for Barcelona. In January 1336, King Alfonso the Kind had died in the city, and after Easter that same year, his son Pedro was crowned in Zaragoza. He became Pedro the Third of Catalonia, Pedro the Fourth of Aragon, and Pedro the Second of Valencia.

Between 1336 and 1339, the new monarch did not so much as visit Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia. Both the nobility and the merchants were concerned at this failure to pay homage to the kingdom’s most important city. They were all well aware of the new king’s dislike of the Catalan nobility: Pedro the Third was the son of Alfonso’s first wife, Teresa de Entenza, countess of Urgel and vice countess of Ager. Teresa had died before her husband became king, and Alfonso remarried, this time to Eleonor of Castille, an ambitious and cruel woman by whom he had two sons.

Despite his conquest of Sardinia, King Alfonso was a weak, easily led man: Queen Eleonor quickly won large tracts of land and honors for her sons. Her next goal was to pursue her stepchildren, the children of Teresa de Entenza who were the heirs to the throne. Throughout the eight years of Alfonso the Kind’s reign, Eleonor never missed an opportunity to attack the Infante Pedro, who was still a young boy, as well as his brother, Jaime, count of Urgel. Only two Catalan nobles, Pedro’s godfather, Ot de Montcada, and Vidal de Vilanova, the knight commander of Montalban, supported the cause of Teresa’s children. It was they who warned King Alfonso and the two brothers to escape before they were poisoned. Pedro and Jaime followed their advice, and hid in the mountains of Jaca in Aragon before finally securing the protection of the nobles of Aragon and seeking refuge in the city of Zaragoza, where they were protected by Archbishop Pedro de Luna.

This was the reason why Pedro’s coronation broke with a tradition that had been upheld ever since the kingdom of Aragon had been united with the principality of Catalonia. While he ascended the throne of Aragon in Zaragoza, the right to rule Catalonia, which belonged to him as the count of Barcelona, had always been granted in Catalan territory. Until Pedro the Third, new monarchs first took the oath in Barcelona, and were later crowned in Zaragoza. Whereas the king took the crown of Aragon simply because he was the new monarch, as count of Barcelona he had to swear allegiance to the laws and customs of Catalonia, a ceremony that was regarded as essential before he could be crowned king.

As count of Barcelona, prince of Catalonia, the monarch was seen by the Catalan nobility simply as