“Who is Aledis then? She told me that...”
Arnau shook his head. Was that a sad gleam in his eyes? wondered Francesca. Arnau seemed to have crumbled in front of her eyes: his arms hung loosely by his sides, and his head seemed too heavy for his neck. But he said nothing. Francesca felt a stab of pain deep inside. “What is going on, my son?” she thought.
“Who is Aledis?” she insisted.
Arnau simply shook his heavy head. He had abandoned everything: Maria, his work, the Virgin ... and now, she was here! And pregnant! Everybody would find out. How could he ever return to Barcelona, to his work or his home?
Francesca looked out of the window. The night was dark. What was the pain gripping her so tightly? She had seen men crawling through the dirt, women with nowhere to turn; she had been a witness to death and misery, to sickness and torment, but never until this moment had she felt anything like this.
“I don’t think she is telling the truth,” she said, struggling to speak as she continued to gaze out of the window. She sensed Arnau stirring behind her.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think she is pregnant. I think she is lying.”
“What does that matter?” Arnau heard himself say.
Aledis was in the camp, and that was more than enough. She was following him, and she would pursue him everywhere. Nothing of what he had done was of any use.
“I could help you.”
“Why would you want to?”
Francesca turned to face him. They were almost side by side; she could reach out and touch him. She could smell his body. “Because you are my son!” she could tell him. Now was the moment if ever—but what had Bernat told him about her? What good would it do for him to learn his mother was a common whore? Francesca stretched out a trembling hand. Arnau did not move. What good would it do? She held back. More than twenty years had gone by, and she was nothing more than a prostitute.
“Because she lied to me,” she answered. “I gave her food and clothing. I took her in. I don’t like being lied to. You look like a good person, and I think she is lying to you too.”
Arnau looked her straight in the eye. What did it matter? Aledis was free of her husband and was far from Barcelona. Aledis would tell everything, and besides, this woman ... what was it in her that somehow made him feel at peace?
He leaned toward her and began to explain.
29
KING PEDRO THE Third had already been in Figueres for seven days when on 28 July 1343, he ordered the army to strike camp and begin the march on Roussillon.
“You’ll have to wait,” Francesca told Aledis while the girls were taking down their tent to follow the soldiers. “When the king orders them to set off, none of them can leave the ranks. Perhaps when we make camp again ...”
Aledis looked at her inquiringly.
“I’ve already sent him a message,” said Francesca in an offhand way. “Are you coming with us?”
Aledis nodded.
“Well, help out then,” Francesca told her sharply.
Twelve hundred men on horseback and more than four thousand foot soldiers, all of them armed and with provisions for eight days, set off toward La Junquera, a town little more than half a day’s march from Figueres. Behind them came a huge train of carts, mules, and all sorts of camp followers. When they reached La Junquera, King Pedro ordered them to set up camp once more: a new papal messenger, an Augustine friar this time, had brought another letter from Jaime the Third. When King Pedro had conquered Mallorca, King Jaime had turned to the pope for aid; on that occasion, monks, bishops, and even cardinals had tried unsuccessfully to mediate.
Now once more King Pedro refused to listen to the papal envoy. His army spent the night at La Junquera. Was this the moment? Francesca wondered as she watched Aledis helping the others prepare the food. No, it was not, she decided. The farther they were from Barcelona and Aledis’s former life, the more opportunity she would have. “We have to wait,” she told Aledis when she inquired anxiously about Arnau.
The next morning, King Pedro ordered everyone on the march again.
“To Panissars! In battle formation! Four columns ready for combat!”
The order ran through the ranks. Arnau heard it as he was ready to move off with the rest of Eiximen d’Esparca’s personal guard. To Panissars! Some of the men shouted the word, others merely whispered it, but all spoke of it with pride and respect. The pass at Panissars! The way through the Pyrenees between Catalan territory and Roussillon. That night, only half a league from La Junquera, stories of the feats of arms from the legendary battle of Panissars could be heard round every campfire.
Panissars was where Catalans—the fathers or grandfathers of the current army—had defeated the French. The Catalans standing alone! Many years earlier, Pedro the Great of Catalonia had been excommunicated by the pope for conquering Sicily without his consent. The French, led by Philippe the Bold, had declared war on the heretic in the name of Christianity, and with the help of some traitors had crossed the Pyrenees by the pass at La Macana.
Pedro the Great had been forced to withdraw. The nobles and knights of Aragon had abandoned him and returned to their own lands.
“Only we Catalans were left!” said someone in the night, silencing even the crackling fire.
“And Roger de Lluria!” shouted another man.
His armies depleted, King Pedro had to allow the French to invade Catalonia while he awaited reinforcements
