The king narrowed his eyes, and asked: “And how does a young friar like you come to know all this?”
“I heard it from Brother Berenguer, a relative of yours.”
“Brother Berenguer?”
Don Pedro nodded; then the king apparently suddenly remembered who this friar was.
“Brother Berenguer,” Joan went on, “was told this in confession by a repentant traitor. He was asked to give you the message, but he is so old and infirm that he entrusted it to me.”
“That was why he wanted the bridge covered on all sides,” infante Don Jaime said. “That way, nobody would see we had been taken prisoner.”
“It would have been easy,” infante Don Pedro agreed.
“You are well aware,” said the king to his sons, “that if my sister the queen is ill, I have to go and see her if she is in my dominions.” Joan listened, not daring to look at any of them. The king fell silent for a while. “I will postpone tonight’s visit, but I need ... Do you hear me, Friar?” Joan gave a start. “I need this repentant sinner to permit us to make this act of treachery public. For as long as it is a secret of the confessional, I will be obliged to go and see the queen. Now be off with you!”
Joan ran back to Framenors and told Brother Berenguer of the king’s demand. King Pedro did not visit his sister that night, and in what he took as a sign that divine providence was protecting him, he suddenly developed a swelling on his face near his eye. This had to be bled, which meant that he spent several days in bed, during which time Brother Berenguer succeeded in obtaining permission for King Pedro to make the plot public.
This time Joan did not doubt for a moment the truth of what he was told.
“Brother Berenguer’s penitent is your own sister,” he told the king as soon he was brought before him, “Queen Constanza, who begs that you bring her to your palace, by force if necessary. Once here, free from her husband’s pressure and placed under your protection, she will reveal all the details of the treachery.”
Accompanied by a battalion of soldiers, infante Don Jaime presented himself at Framenors to carry out Queen Constanza’s wishes. The friars allowed him in, and the infante and his soldiers went directly to see the king. All his protests were in vain: Constanza left for the royal palace soon afterward.
The king of Mallorca had little more success when he appeared before his brother-in-law.
“Since I gave my word to the pope,” King Pedro told him, “I will respect your safe conduct. Your wife will remain here under my protection. Now leave my kingdom.”
As soon as Jaime of Mallorca and his four galleys had departed, King Pedro ordered Arnau d’Erill to make haste with the trial against his brother-in-law. A few days later, the magistrate ruled that all the lands of the unfaithful vassal, who had been tried in his absence, were to pass into the hands of King Pedro. Now the king had the legitimate excuse he had been seeking to declare war on the king of Mallorca.
Overjoyed at the possibility of reuniting the kingdoms that his forebear Jaime the Conqueror had divided, King Pedro sent for the young friar who had revealed the plot to him.
“You have served us well and faithfully,” the king told him. This time, he was seated on his throne. “I shall grant you a favor.”
Joan had already been told by the royal messengers that this was what the king intended to do. He had thought hard about it. He had joined the Franciscan order at his teachers’ suggestion, but as soon as he had entered the Framenors convent, he had been sorely disappointed: Where were the books? Where was the knowledge? Where could he work and study? When he finally spoke to the prior, the old man patiently reminded him of the three principles of the order, as established by Saint Francis of Assisi: “Complete simplicity, complete poverty, and complete humility. That is how we Franciscans must live.”
But Joan wanted to investigate, to study, to read and learn. Hadn’t his masters taught him that this too was the way of the Lord? Whenever he met a Dominican monk, he was filled with envy. The Dominican order was mainly devoted to the study of philosophy and theology, and had created several universities. What Joan most wanted was to join their order and to be able to continue his studies in the prestigious university at Bologna.
“So be it,” the king decreed after hearing Joan’s argument. All the hairs on the young friar’s body stood on end. “We trust that one day you will return to our kingdoms endowed with the moral authority that comes from knowledge and wisdom, and that you will apply that authority for the benefit of your king and his people.”
26
ALMOST TWO YEARS had gone by since the Barcelona magistrate had ruled against King Jaime the Third of Mallorca. All the bells in the city were ringing incessantly; inside Santa Maria, still without walls, Arnau listened to them with a shrinking heart. The king had declared war on Mallorca, and the city had filled with nobles and soldiers. On guard outside the Jesus chapel, Arnau could see them among the ordinary people who had flocked to the church and the square outside. Every church in the city was holding a mass for the Catalan army.
Arnau felt weary. The king had assembled his fleet in the port of Barcelona, and for several days now, the
It must have been in one of those galleys that Joan, in his black habit, had sailed off to Bologna a year earlier. Arnau had accompanied him to the shore. Joan jumped into the boat and sat with his back to the sea, smiling at him. Arnau watched him settle, and as soon as the oarsmen began to row, he felt his stomach wrench and had to fight back his tears. He was on his own.
He felt the same even now. He looked around him. The church bells were still ringing from every bell tower in the city. Nobles, clergymen, soldiers, merchants, artisans, and the ordinary inhabitants of Barcelona were thronging Santa Maria. His fellow guild members stood on guard beside him, and yet how lonely he felt! All his hopes, all his life’s dreams had vanished just like the old church that had given way to the new one. There was nothing left of it. No trace at all of the Romanesque church: all he could see was the huge, wide central nave of the new Santa Maria, bounded by the soaring arches and the roof vaults. Beyond the columns, the exterior walls of
