Cathedral of the Sea (102 page)

The fact was, fortune had smiled on them once more. On Guillem’s advice, Arnau had dedicated himself to maritime insurance. Unlike Genoa, Venice, or Pisa, Catalonia had no such provision, which made it a paradise for the first people to venture into this area of commerce. However, it was only the wise few like Arnau and Guillem who managed to survive. The Catalan financial system was on the verge of collapse, and threatened to take with it all those who had hoped to make quick profits either by insuring a cargo for more than its worth, which was often the last they heard of it, or by offering insurance on ships and goods even after it was known they had been seized by pirates, in the hope that the news was false. But Arnau and Guillem chose their ships and the risk involved carefully, and soon they had the same vast network of agents working for them in their new business as they had used in times gone by.

On the twenty-sixth of December of 1379, Arnau could no longer ask Guillem if he might use some of their money for Santa Maria. The Moor had died suddenly a year earlier. Arnau had found him sitting in his chair out in the garden, as usual facing Mecca, to where, in what was an open secret, he always prayed. Arnau informed the members of the Moorish community, and they took Guillem’s body away under cover of night.

That night in December 1379, Santa Maria had been ravaged by a terrible fire. It reduced the sacristy, choir, organs, altars, and everything else in the interior not made of stone to a pile of ashes. The stonework too suffered the effects of the fire, and the keystone depicting King Alfonso the Benign, father of Pedro the Ceremonious (who had paid for this part of the work), was completely destroyed.

The king flew into a rage at the destruction of this homage to his august forebear, and demanded the effigy be re-created. The La Ribera neighborhood had too much to worry about to pay much heed to the monarch’s demands. All their money and effort went into a new sacristy, choir, organs, and altars; the equestrian figure of King Alfonso was cleverly reconstructed in plaster, stuck onto the stone, and painted red and gold.

On the third of November 1383, the last keystone above the central nave, the one closest to the main door, was put in place. On the end was sculpted the coat of arms of the commission of works, in honor of all the anonymous citizens who had contributed to the construction of the church.

Arnau glanced up at the keystone. Mar and Bernat did the same, and then, wreathed in smiles, the three of them made their way to the high altar.

From the moment the heavy keystone had been lifted onto its scaffold, waiting for the columns of the arches to reach up to it, Arnau had repeated the same thing over and over: “That is our emblem,” he told his son.

“Father,” Bernat retorted, “that’s the people of Barcelona’s emblem. Important people like you have their coats of arms engraved on the arches, the columns, in the chapels and in ...” Arnau raised his hand to try to stem the flow of his son’s words, but the boy rushed on: “You don’t even have your stall in the choir!”

“This is the church of the people, my boy. Many men have given their lives for it, yet their names are nowhere to be found.”

In his mind’s eye, Arnau saw himself as a youngster carrying blocks of stone from the royal quarry down to Santa Maria.

“Your father,” Mar said, “has engraved many of these stones with his blood. There can be no greater homage than that.”

Bernat turned to look at his father, eyes wide open.

“I and many others, my son,” said Arnau, “many, many others.”

August in the Mediterranean, August in Barcelona. The sun was shining with a splendor hard to equal anywhere else on earth. Before it filtered in through the stained glass of Santa Maria and played on color and stone inside, the sea reflected the light back to the sun, lending its rays an unmatched beauty. Inside the church, the shafts of light mingled with the quivering flames of thousands of candles lit on the high altar and the side chapels. The smell of incense filled the air, and organ music swelled in the perfect acoustics of the central nave.

Arnau, Mar, and Bernat walked up to the high altar. Beneath the magnificent apse, surrounded by eight graceful columns and in front of a reredos, stood the small figure of the Virgin of the Sea. Behind the altar, which was covered in fine French lace that King Pedro had lent for the occasion (not without sending word beforehand from Vilafranca del Penedès that the cloths should be returned immediately after the celebration), Bishop Pere de Planella was preparing to say mass to consecrate the church.

Santa Maria was so full that the three of them could not get close to the altar. Some of those in the congregation recognized Arnau and stood back to let him through, but he thanked them and stood where he was among the crowd: they were his people, his family. The only ones missing were Guillem ... and Joan. Arnau preferred to remember his brother as the young boy with whom he had discovered the world rather than as the bitter monk who had sacrificed himself in flames.

Bishop Pere de Planella began the mass.

Arnau was troubled. Guillem, Joan, Maria, his father... and that old woman. Why whenever he thought of those no longer with him did he always end up remembering her? He had asked Guillem to search for her and Aledis.

“They have vanished,” the Moor told him.

“They said she was my mother,” Arnau said out loud. “Search harder.”

“I haven’t been able to find them,” Guillem told him again, some time later.

“But ...”

“Forget them,” Guillem had advised him, in a tone that brooked no argument.

Pere de Planella was still saying mass.

Arnau was sixty-three years old. He felt tired, and leaned on his son.

Bernat squeezed his father’s arm affectionately. Arnau bent his mouth to his son’s ear and pointed toward the high altar.

“Can you see her smile, my son?” he asked.

I
N WRITING THIS novel I have closely followed the
Crónica
written by King Pedro the Third, adapting it where necessary to the requirements of a work of fiction.

The choice of Navarcles as the site of the castle and estates of the lord of Navarcles is entirely fictional, but the baronies of Granollers, San Vicenc dels Horts, and Caldes de Montbui, which King Pedro offers Arnau as the dowry for his ward Eleonor (another fictional creation), did exist. These baronies were ceded in 1380 by the infante Martin, son of Pedro the Ceremonious, to Guillem Ramon de Montcada, of the Sicilian branch of the Montcada family, as reward for his good offices in support of the marriage between Queen María and one of Martin’s sons, who subsequently reigned and was known as “the Humane.” Guillem de Montcada held these estates for a much shorter time than the protagonist of my novel: no sooner had he been granted them than he sold them to the Count of Urgell and used the money to equip a fleet and dedicate himself to piracy.

According to the
Usatges
of Catalonia, a feudal lord did have the right to lie with the bride of any of his serfs on her wedding night. The existence of privileges in old Catalonia, compared to the new Catalan territories, led the serfs to rebel repeatedly against their lords, until the 1486 Judgment of Guadalupe abolished these privileges, although it did stipulate at the same time that the lords stripped of their rights in this way should be paid generous compensation.

The royal judgment against Joan’s mother, which obliged her to live enclosed in a room on bread and water until her death, was pronounced in 1330 by Alfonso the Third against a woman by the name of Eulàlia, consort of one Juan Dosca.

The author in no way shares the opinions about women or peasants expressed throughout this novel: nearly all of them have been faithfully copied from the book written by the monk Francesc Eiximenis, approximately in the year 1381, entitled Lo
crestià.

As occurs with the marriage between Mar and Felip de Ponts, in medieval Catalonia rapists could marry their victims, even if the abduction had been a violent one, thanks to the Usatge
“Si quis virginem.”
This was not true in the rest of Spain, which was governed by the legal tradition of the Visigoths in the
Fuero Juzgo,
which prohibited it.

The violator’s duty was to provide the woman with a dowry so that she could find a husband, or to marry her himself. If she was married, she was treated as an adulteress.

No one is sure whether the episode in which King Jaime of Mallorca tries to abduct his brother-in-law Pedro the Third, which fails because a friar who is close to Pedro hears details of the plot during confession (helped in the novel by Joan), actually happened or not. It may well have been invented by Pedro the Third as an excuse for the legal action taken by him against the king of Mallorca, which ended with his requisitioning his kingdoms. What does appear to be true is King Jaime’s demand to have a wooden bridge built to link his galleys, anchored in the port of Barcelona, with Framenors convent. Perhaps this served to arouse King Pedro’s imagination to invent the plot mentioned in his chronicles.

The attempt to invade Barcelona by Pedro the Cruel of Castille is described in minute detail in Pedro the Third’s
Crónica.
The buildup of land along the Barcelona coast meant that its earlier harbors could no longer be used, with the result that the city was defenseless against natural phenomena and enemy attacks. It was not until 1340 that, during the reign of Alfonso the Magnanimous, a new, more adequate port was built.

The sea battle took place as Pedro the Third describes it, and the Castillian fleet was prevented from gaining access to the city because a ship—a carrack, according to the medieval chronicles of Capmany—was grounded on the offshore
tasques
(sandbanks) to halt their advance. It was during this battle that the first references are made to the use of artillery—a bricola mounted on the prow of the king’s galley—in naval warfare. It was not long before ships, which until then had been used chiefly as a means of troop transport, were equipped with heavy cannons, changing the whole concept of naval battles. In his
Crónica,
Pedro the Third delights in the way that the Catalan
host
ranged on the shore, or in the numerous small craft that set out to defend the capital mocked and insulted Pedro the Cruel’s army. He considers it, together with the effective use of the bricola, as one of the main reasons why the king of Castille was forced to reconsider his plans to invade Barcelona.

In the revolt of Plaza del Blat during the first so-called bad year, when the citizens of Barcelona demanded they be given grain, the leaders were given summary justice and hanged. For plot reasons, I have placed these executions in Plaza del Blat. It is also true that the authorities thought that a simple oath could help put a stop to the hunger.

Another person who was executed, in the year 1360, was the money changer F. Castelló. As stipulated by law, he was beheaded outside his countinghouse, close to what nowadays is Plaza Palacio.

In 1367, after being accused of profaning a host and having been locked in the synagogue without food or water, three Jews were executed on the orders of infante Don Juan, King Pedro’s deputy.

Jews were strictly forbidden to leave their houses during the Christian Holy Week. They were also ordered to keep the doors and windows of their homes closed so that they could not see or interfere with the numerous processions. Even so, Easter saw an increase in the fears of the Christian fanatics, and accusations of the celebration of heretical rites also grew at a time of year that the Jews came to have just reason to fear.

Two main accusations were made against the Jews during Easter: the ritual murder of Christians, and especially children, in order to crucify and torture them, drink their blood, or eat their hearts; and the profanation of the host. Both of these were commonly seen as designed to re-create the pain and suffering of Christ believed in by the Catholics.

The first known accusation of the crucifixion of a Christian child comes from the Holy Roman Empire in Würzburg, Germany, in 1147. As was so often the case with accusations against the Jews, popular feeling led to similar charges quickly spreading throughout Europe. Only a year later, in 1148, the English Jews in the city of Norwich were accused of crucifying another Christian boy. From then on, accusations of ritual murder, usually during Easter and often involving crucifixion, became widespread: Gloucester, 1168; Fulda, 1235; Lincoln, 1255, Munich, 1286 ... Hatred of the Jews and popular credulity were so strong that in the fifteenth century an Italian Franciscan friar, Bernardino da Feltre, predicted that a Christian child was to be crucified: an event that actually happened in Trent, where the little boy Simon was found dead on a cross. The Catholic Church beatified Simon, but the friar went on “prophesying” further crucifixions, in Reggio, Bassano, and Mantua. Simon was a martyr of fanaticism rather than faith, but it was not until midway through the twentieth century that the Catholic Church finally annulled his beatification.

One occasion when the Barcelona host was summoned—although this took place in the year 1369, later than I have situated it in the book—was against the village of Creixell, when the local lord prevented the free passage and grazing of cattle headed for Barcelona, where by law the animals had to arrive alive. The seizure of animals was one of the main reasons why the host was called upon to defend the city’s privileges against other towns and feudal lords.

Santa Maria de la Mar is without doubt one of the most beautiful churches to be found anywhere. It may lack the monumentality of others built at the same time or later, but its interior is filled with the spirit with which Berenguer de Montagut sought to infuse it: the people’s church, built by the people of Barcelona for Barcelona, is like an airy Catalan farmhouse. It is austere, protected, and protecting, and the light of the Mediterranean sets it apart from any other church in the world.