was too quick for him: he parried the blow by grasping the man’s forearm, then spun round quickly and sent him crashing to the ground again, several yards away. This did not hurt the soldier, and so again and again he returned to the charge.
Finally, just when the soldier was expecting him to throw him off once more, Arnau instead punched him straight in the face, putting all his pent-up rage into the blow. The soldier fell at his feet, knocked cold. Arnau wanted to clutch his own hand to try to stop the stinging pain he could feel in his knuckles, but instead he stood staring defiantly at the small crowd that had gathered, his fist raised as though he might strike again. “Don’t get up,” he said silently to the fallen man, “for God’s sake, don’t get up.”
The veteran tried drunkenly to stagger to his feet. “Don’t do it!” Arnau put his foot in the other man’s face and pushed him to the ground. “Don’t get up, you whoreson.” The soldier lay still, until he was dragged away by his friends.
“You there!” The voice was one of command. Arnau turned and saw himself confronted by the knight who had caused the fight in the first place. He was still in full armor. “Come over here.”
Arnau went over to him, secretly nursing his bruised hand.
“My name is Eiximen d’Esparca, King Pedro the Third’s shield bearer. I want you to serve under me. Go and see my attendants.”
28
THE THREE YOUNG women fell silent and looked at one another as Aledis threw herself on the stew like a starving animal. She kneeled down and scooped up the meat and vegetables directly from the cooking pot, without even pausing for breath, although she did keep an eye on them over the food. The youngest of the three, who had blond curls that cascaded down over a sky blue robe, twisted her lips at the other two: which of them had not been in the same situation? she seemed to be saying. Her companions exchanged knowing glances with her, and all three moved away from Aledis.
As she did so, the girl with the golden curls turned to look inside the large tent, where, protected from the July sun that beat down on the camp, four other women, slightly older than the first three, were also staring intently at Aledis. So too did their mistress, who sat in the middle of them on a stool. She had nodded when Aledis appeared, and agreed she should be given food. Since then, she had not taken her eyes off her: she was dressed in filthy rags, but she was beautiful... and young. What could she be doing here? She was not a vagabond: she did not seem to want to beg. Nor was she a prostitute: she had instinctively recoiled when she saw who she was with. She was filthy, wearing a torn smock and with a mass of disheveled, greasy hair. But her teeth were gleaming white. She had obviously never known hunger, or the kinds of disease that left teeth blackened. What was she doing there? She must be running away from something, but what?
The mistress gestured toward one of the women inside the tent with her.
“I want her cleaned and tidied up,” she whispered as the other woman leaned over her.
The woman looked at Aledis, smiled, and nodded.
ALEDIS COULD NOT resist. “You need a bath,” said another of the prostitutes, who had come out of the tent. A bath! How many days had it been since she had even washed? They got ready a tub of fresh water for her inside the tent. Aledis sat in it, her knees drawn up, while the three prostitutes who had watched her eat began to wash her. Why not let them fuss over her? She could not appear before Arnau looking the way she did. The army was camped close by, and he must be with them. She had done it! So why not let them look after her? She also allowed them to dress her. They looked for the least garish robe, but even so ... “Streetwalkers must wear brightly colored clothes,” her mother had once told her as a child, when she had mistaken a prostitute for a noble lady and stepped aside to let her by. “So how do we tell the two apart?” Aledis had asked. “The king obliges them to dress that way, but he prohibits them from wearing any cape or cloak, even in wintertime. That’s how you can tell the prostitutes: they always have bare shoulders.”
Aledis looked down at herself now. Women of her social rank, the wives of artisans, were not allowed to wear bright colors, but how lovely this cloth was! But how could she go and find Arnau dressed like this? The soldiers would take her for ... She raised an arm to see how the sides of the robe looked.
“Do you like it?”
Aledis turned and saw the mistress standing in the entrance to the tent. At a sign from her, Antonia, the young girl with blond curls who had helped her dress, vanished outside.
“Yes ... no ...” Aledis looked at herself once more. The robe was bright green. Perhaps these women had something she could wrap round her shoulders? If she covered them, then nobody would think she was a prostitute.
The mistress looked her up and down. She had been right: the girl had a voluptuous body that would delight any of the army captains. And those eyes! They were huge. Chestnut brown. And yet there was a sad look to them. The two women stared at each other.
“What brought you here, my girl?”
“My husband. He’s in the king’s army, and left before he could learn he’s going to be a father. I want to tell him now, before he goes into combat.”
She said this as quickly as she could, just as she had done to the traders who had rescued her at the River Besos when the ferryman, after he had raped her, was trying to get rid of her by drowning her in the river. They had taken him by surprise, and he had run away as fast as his legs could take him. Aledis had not been able to fight him off forever, and in the end let him have his way with her and then drag her by the hair down to the river. The outside world then no longer existed. The sun ceased to shine, and all she could hear was the boatman’s panting, which echoed inside her and mingled with her memories and sense of helplessness. When the traders arrived and saw how badly she had been treated, they took pity on her.
“You have to tell the magistrate about this,” they said.
But what could she tell the king’s official? What if her husband was looking for her? What if she were found out? There would be a trial, and she could not...
“No. I have to reach the royal camp before the armies leave for Roussillon,” she said, after explaining that she was pregnant and that her husband was unaware of it. “I’ll tell him, and he will decide what we should do.”
The traders went with her as far as Girona. Aledis left them at Sant Feliu church, outside the city walls. The oldest among them shook his head sadly when he saw her so lonely and bedraggled by the church walls. Aledis remembered the old women’s warning-don’t go into any town or city—and so she avoided Girona, where some six thousand people lived. From outside the city, she could see the outline of the cathedral Santa Maria, still under construction, and next to it the bishop’s palace and next to that the tall, imposing Gironella Tower, the city’s main defensive point. She gazed at all these fine buildings for a few moments, then continued on her way to
