Cathedral of the Sea

The Almogavars. There they were again. Arnau turned to look at them. They were working tirelessly and now seemed to be perfectly well organized. None of them was laughing or arguing; they were all getting on with the task in hand.

“How can they possibly frighten the people inside the castle so much?” asked Arnau.

The veteran laughed. “You’ve never seen them fight, have you?” Arnau shook his head. “Just wait and see.”

Arnau waited, dozing on the hard ground through a long night during which the mercenaries kept on building their machines by torchlight.

As day dawned and the sun rose over the horizon, Eiximen d’Esparca ordered his troops to deploy round the castle. The shadows of the night had barely dispersed in the first timid light of day. Arnau looked round to see where the Almogavars were. This time they had obeyed the order, and were drawn up beneath the walls of Bellaguarda. Arnau peered up at the lofty castle. All the lights inside had been extinguished, but he knew they were waiting inside the walls. He shivered. What was he doing there? The morning air was chill, but his hands were sweaty on the crossbow. There was complete silence. He could die. The day before, he had often seen the defenders staring straight at him, a mere bastaix: the faces of those men, which then had been blurred in the distance, now appeared clearly before him. They were there, waiting for him! He shivered again. His knees were knocking, and he had to make a great effort to stop his teeth from chattering. He clasped his crossbow firmly to his chest so that nobody could see how his hands were shaking. The captain had told him that when the order to advance was given, he should run toward the castle, seek cover behind some boulders, and fire his crossbow up at the defenders. The problem would be to reach those boulders. Could he do it? Arnau found himself staring at them. He had to run there, hide behind them, fire his bow, duck down again, fire a second time ...

A command rent the air.

The order to attack! The boulders! Arnau got ready to sprint toward them, but felt the captain’s gloved hand holding him back.

“Not yet,” said the officer.

“But ...”

“Not yet,” the captain repeated. “Look.”

He pointed toward the Almogavars.

From among their ranks, another cry went up: “Awake, iron!”

Arnau could not take his eyes off them. Suddenly, all of them took up the cry: “Awake, iron!”

At this, all the Almogavars beat their spears and knives together until the sound drowned out their voices.

“Awake, iron!”

Their steel weapons did start to awaken, sending out showers of sparks as the blades clashed against one another or on rocks. The thunderous noise deafened Arnau. Bit by bit, hundreds and then thousands of sparks flashed in the dark, and the mercenaries were soon surrounded by a halo of bright light.

Arnau found himself waving his crossbow in the air and shouting with them: “Awake, iron!” He was no longer sweating or trembling. “Awake, iron!”

He glanced up at the castle walls: it seemed as if the Almogavars’ battle cry would bring them tumbling down. The ground was shaking, and the bright glow from the sparks grew and grew. All of a sudden, there was the sound of a trumpet, and the shouting changed into a mighty roar: “Sant Jordi! Sant Jordi!”

“Now you can go,” shouted the captain, pushing Arnau forward in the wake of about two hundred men who were charging ferociously up the castle mound.

Arnau ran to seek cover behind the boulders alongside the captain and a company of crossbow men. He concentrated on one of the scaling ladders the Almogavars had placed against the wall, trying to aim at the figures who were fighting off the mercenaries from the top of the battlements. The Almogavars were still shrieking like madmen. Arnau’s aim was true: he twice saw his bolts strike defenders below their chain-mail protection, and the bodies fall back.

As one group of attackers managed to scale the castle walls, Arnau felt the captain’s hand on his shoulder, telling him to stop firing. There was no need to use the battering ram: as soon as the Almogavars had appeared on the battlements, the castle gates opened and several knights galloped out to avoid being taken hostage. Two of them fell to the Catalan crossbow fire; the others succeeded in escaping. Deserted by their leaders, some of the castle defenders started to surrender. Eiximen d’Esparca and his cavalry forced their way into the castle and laid about them, killing anyone who resisted. The foot soldiers poured in after them.

After he had rushed inside the castle, Arnau came to a halt, crossbow over his shoulder, dagger in hand. It was not needed. The castle yard was strewn with the dead, and those still alive were on their knees, unarmed, begging for mercy from the knights who strode around, broadswords at the ready. The Almogavars were already plundering the castle’s riches: some had entered the castle keep; others were stripping the bodies with a greed that Arnau could not bear to watch. One of them came up and offered him a handful of crossbow bolts. Some of them had missed their aim, but others were stained with blood, and a few still had lumps of flesh caught on them. Arnau hesitated. The Almogavar, an older man who was as tough and wiry as the bolts he was holding out, was surprised at Arnau’s reaction. Then he smiled a toothless smile and offered them to another soldier.

“What are you doing?” the soldier asked Arnau. “Do you think Eiximen is going to replace your bolts for you? Clean these off,” he said, throwing them at Arnau’s feet.

In a few hours it was all over. The surviving men were shepherded together and manacled. That same night they would be sold as slaves in the camp that followed the Catalan army. Eiximen d’Esparca’s men set off again to regain the main army. They took their wounded with them, leaving behind seventeen Catalan dead and a blazing fortress that would no longer be of any use to King Jaime the Third and his allies.

30

EIXIMEN D’ESPARCA AND his men caught up with the royal army near the town of Elna the Proud, barely two leagues from Perpignan. The king decided to make camp there for the night. He received the visit of yet another bishop, who once again tried unsuccessfully to mediate on behalf of Jaime of Mallorca.

Although King Pedro had not objected to Eiximen d’Esparca and his Almogavars taking Bellaguarda castle, he